Chet Raymo points out what exactly it was Thoreau romanticized, and asks if we might consider doing the same:

Thoreau scholar David Foster writes: “Despite the cleared forests, the dwindling animal populations, the dammed and polluted rivers, and the declining numbers of waterfowl and fish, Thoreau was able to find wildness in a thousand scenes, each one shaped by human activity… And, of course, he could turn Walden, a cut-over and ‘tamed’ woodlot, whose shores had recently been desecrated by one thousand workers building the railroad to Fitchburg, into a symbol of solitude, natural values, and wilderness.”