How did Thoreau's individualism affect his attitude toward nature and politics?Thoreau and nature Thoreau and politics

To use his own words, Henry David Thoreau "marched to the
beat of a different drummer."  A veritable individual and original thinker, Thoreau went
into the woods in order to ponder the meaning of his existence; he went deliberately in
order to learn from Nature, and to

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front the essential facts of life, and see if I
could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had
not lived.

While in the
woods, Thoreau observed warring ants and praises their "pertinacity."  During his
encounter with a loon, Thoreau is outsmarted by
nature: 

But
why, after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the moment he
came up by that loud
laugh?

He left the woods, he
declared, for much the same reason; he had begun to fall into the most trivial
of pursuits:

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It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we
fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for
ourselves.

On political
issues, Thoreau was thoroughly an independent thinker, as well.  This independence and
fearlessness of Thoreau's nature led him to speak out actively according to his moral
sensibilities.  For instance, he supported the Abolitionists long before doing so had
any popularity.  In 1845, following the example of Louisa May Alcott's father, Bronson
Alcott, Thoreau went to prison rather than pay a poll tax to a government that
"countenanced war and slavery."  His quiet resistance to what he considered an
oppressive government influenced great leaders such as Mohandas Gandi and Martin Luther
King, Jr. who practiced the same passive
resistance.

Clearly ahead of his times, Thoreau was not
appreciated for his thinking until after his death.  To this day, there is a Thoreau
society that works toward the preservation of Walden and other natural
areas.