I recently finished a reread of Walden. I first read Walden in high school. I had started taking International Baccalaureate classes and had to take a class entitled Theory of Knowledge. As befits a class of such a grandiose title, we read a variety of philosophy, including, Emerson and Thoreau. It was in that class that I was first introduced to Walden. I was fascinated by Thoreau’s adventure “far” from society. His documentation of his years of simplicity, from the cost of building his cabin, to the bean yield, and his walks through the Woods all made me think about how I would like to live. I was intrigued at how a man could ostensibly live apart from the world without much concern.
Later on, I found that my father had held a similar intrigue for Thoreau. He has reread Walden every year for many, many years. Some of us are born with a desire to become closer to nature and the world around us. Thoreau is a beacon for those people, or, at least that is what appears by me.
Beyond his attempt to “commune with nature”, Thoreau also is a spiritual, or rather, secular, father of simplicity and minimalism. Indeed, in the beginning of his book, he notes that those who know him would find this experiment to be odd, being contrary to the man that they know. Isn’t that the minimalism that we have all embraced, coming from a life of excess and moving towards something simpler? Perhaps we are all Thoreaus in some sense.
As I read Walden again, I was struck by the simplicity of his building. I have been lucky enough to read Michael Pollan’s “A Place of my Own,” which references another book, “Tiny Houses.” by Les Walker. This book contains many examples of dwellings of 300 square feet or less, including Thoreau’s cabin. It appears so simple to build. It was so simple that others mimicked his design. Most interestingly, Daniel Ricketson’s cabin was an attempt to mimic Thoreau’s design. What was sad, in the description, was that Ricketson did not build the cabin himself, but rather hired out to do it.
What does it say about us when we merely try to facially mimic the things that we see in others, be it having a cabin built, or reducing our things to 100? I want to explore this question in further posts. For now, all I will say is, read Walden, it’s always worthwhile.
