Thoreau’s Home in Nature
We’ve begun a unit on “Home” here at Nature Links, so we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Henry David Thoreau. You likely know his story, but here it is just in case. At the age of 28, Thoreau decided he would go live in the woods “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.” He built a 10’ by 15’ cabin near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. His materials cost him $28 (just under $900 today). He lived there for 2 years, 2 months and 2 days. His book Walden, a reflection on Thoreau’s endeavor to live simply, surrounded by nature is considered a classic in American literature (Walden wasn’t an immediate hit and the book even went out of print until Thoreau’s death in 1862). The book outlines Thoreau’s philosophies on simple living and self-sufficiency. In Nature Links, we learned about Thoreau, read excerpts from Walden, and looked at photographs of a recreated version of Thoreau’s cabin. Why did he want to live there? Could you live in a cabin in the woods like this? For how long and what would you need to bring with you to be happy? We discussed all of these questions and more.
Our essential question for our unit on home, the question we’re exploring throughout are learning, is “How do homes meet the needs of the creatures who live in them?” One participant explained that Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond met his need for freedom. “He was looking for freedom in the woods, away from cities and lots of people. He wanted to try to find his freedom within nature.” Another remarked that Thoreau’s cabin met his need to prove to himself and the world that he could be self-sufficient. “He wanted his cabin to keep him safe so he could survive the winters, but he wanted to rough it a little. He didn’t want things to be easy and perfect. He wanted to feel what it really felt like to survive on your own.”
Our exploration of Thoreau has us thinking a lot about “simple living” here at Nature Links, and the term is one we’ll return to throughout our unit on home as we investigate the homes of animals and humans around the world. We’ll be checking in on Inuit igloos in the Arctic and “minka” homes in Japan. We’ll learn about underground prairie dog colonies and sky-high osprey nests. We’ll check out the Tiny House Movement and how it can help provide housing for the homeless. We’ll learn how beavers build their lodges and how bees build their hives. Throughout our unit we’ll be wondering, “how does this particular home meet that creature’s needs?”. The hope is that we’ll all gain a deeper understanding of how and why animals build (or sometimes repurpose) the homes they live in based on their unique environments, adaptations and skills. And I hope we’ll also come away from this unit with a greater appreciation for our own homes, and an understanding of the ways in which the Earth houses us all. “I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home,” Thoreau wrote. Many Nature Links participants can relate to that feeling.
