The Innermost House Foundation™ is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) public benefit organization, uniting conversation, culture and conservation to continue the work that began at Walden. We are a fellowship of friends seeking the wisdom of Life in the Woods. Our special mission is to influence thought culture and promote public awareness of the American wisdom tradition, as represented by our laws and institutions, literature and arts, natural history, philosophy, and spirituality. We seek a common ground between North and South, East and West, mind and body, civilization and wilderness, to the end of approaching the new world ideal of a "healing of the nations." Our work has its roots in the philosophical and spiritual ideals of the ancient world, culminating in this country in the founding generation, in Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and in John Muir. Our values are the perennial ideals of freedom, equality, self reliance, and the sanctity of the individual human being.