My favorite insight on Thoreau's undisturbed nature living is that he had his mother do his laundry. I am not trying to be mean or cynical about his philosophy---just saying that one has to be clear-eyed about the tradeoffs. Personally, I think that an intelligent person should look at both the conventional modern lifestyle and the happy nature lifestyle, and try to understand and extract the best features of both. You know, thesis and anti-thesis leading to synthesis.