Photo by Amy Belding Brown
"There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his
own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest." - H. D. Thoreau,
Walden,
chapter
1
The original must have looked rougher, with it's "imperfect and sappy
shingles made of the first slice of the log," but also newer when Henry
lived there. The Concord Museum has some of the original cabin furniture
on display.
Building a Card Model of
Henry's Cabin - with a free kit that can
be downloaded
The interior of the cabin replica at Walden includes
a table, bed, desk, two chairs, the fireplace and a firewood box. Henry's
cabin would also have had a closet. Photo by Amy
Belding Brown
More about Henry's stay at the Walden cabin: Thoreau’s
First Year at Walden in Fact & Fiction
The tour returns across the road, and ahead about three years - Start
of tour - Next
Henry Thoreau sends New Year's greetings...
Excerpted from Parke Wilde's blog on U.S.
Food Policy, January 2, 2005
My family frequently swims and walks at Walden Pond, a few miles from
our home. But on a sunny New Year's Day, we mainly had walking in mind,
although we did see one brave family take a ritual dip as they apparently
do every year. Actually, the children in the family bravely hid their embarrassment
on shore while their parents braved the waters. The pond is popular with
free-spirited folk.
My oldest child, four years old, likes the replica of Thoreau’s tiny
cabin next to the parking lot, and also the quiet grove where the original
cabin’s foundation lies at the far shore of the pond. The boy knows Henry
as the bear in the delightful
books by D. B. Johnson, who captures for children the heart and soul
of Thoreau’s essays. To our delight yesterday, the cabin was occupied by
a
charming and talented Thoreau re-enactor, who invited us in for traditional
local New Year’s Day biscuits (baked in a real wood oven from a nineteenth-century
recipe).
I meant to tell him how good he was at his acting, but part of his charm
was his refusal to break character, so I thought better to leave the compliment
unsaid. Once my eldest got over his surprise in finding that Henry was
a person rather than a bear, he was enchanted. He especially liked hearing
about the Concord jail, from which Henry said he
had recently been freed. A day later, my son asked me if I paid taxes.
Thoreau Reader: Home - Walden
- Walden Photos
