This was Thoreau’s occupation according to him:
The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot. Now that I think of it, I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist.
Thoreau believed that his faith, his transcendentalism, defines his work. Thoreau spent a quarter of a century in a quest for transcendent reality, in an attempt to discover the secret of the universe. This transcendent reality is the true and ideal world he is seeking.
He asserts that contrary to popular thinking, this quest, which often lands on the hands of poets and philosophers, is the only true practicality.
I adopted Thoreau’s quest in my quest.
References
Seybold, Ethel. “Proteus.” Thoreau: The Quest and the Classics, Yale University Press, 1951, pp. 1–21.