Building Thoreau’s Cabin
Front page of Sunday’s NYT: “They’re Not Alone in Copying Thoreau’s Cabin in the Woods.” Henry David Thoreau and his Walden cabin are as American as it gets. Rugged individualism? Check. Pioneering spirit? Check. Having to tell everyone about it? Check. (Just kidding…maybe?)
This article profiles people who build replicas of Thoreau’s cabin with their own two hands. Which is definitely a thing. The Thoreau Society in Concord sells blueprints, and a place called the Sam Beauford Woodworking Institute in Michigan offers a four-week “Walden Cabin Series.” One couple in North Carolina has furnished their cabin “nearly true” to Thoreau’s (including “dents and nicks in the desk matching the writer’s own.”) In Maine, an architect roped his two sons into this construction project, and the rules of engagement were that they could not damage or remove any living trees from their property. And not in the piece: My kids’ former school actually has a Thoreau cabin in its parking lot. It was built by students in a class called — ta da — “Building Thoreau’s Cabin” in 1997. (I posted about it in 2019.)
But I’m sort of intrigued why this idea endures. We see it in the popularity of ADUs or what some call “she sheds.” Michael Pollan documented the entire process of building his own “hut” (aka office) in A Place of My Own. (Currently reading!) From a modern-day perspective, we can easily point to: an antidote to steadily increasing home sizes, a need to “escape” from the barrage of information via technology, an attempt to tone down our material excesses and desires. Similarly, there’s something psychological about having to leave one structure for another.
But I think the print headline of this piece says it all: “They’re Not Alone…” Many of us like/need “alone time.” I know that my best thinking usually occurs in an empty house. Nonetheless, I’m guessing that humans’ need for solitude never outweighs our need to feel like we’re not the only ones (with whatever topic). And maybe that’s where Thoreau and his ever-copied cabin comes in.
PS: Charlotte author @jen.mcgivney has written Finding Your Walden, a bestseller at Park Road Books last year!
originally published on instagram