This semester, myself and six other students have been spending our Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings in a particularly unique classroom: a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin, situated on the Vassar Preserve. The aim of English 307—taught by Professor Paul Kane—has been to study the life and works of Thoreau in an especially “Thoreauvian” way by using our class time to construct a life-size replica of his cabin on Walden Pond.
During the pandemic, Kane, along with all other Vassar professors, had to teach all classes outside in order to maintain social distancing, so he made the most of it by starting Thoreau’s Cabin. That 2020 class spent the fall semester building the entire exterior of the cabin from scratch based on the instructions Thoreau details in his book Walden as well as using research done by more modern scholars to provide more insight into the cabin itself. Since then, Kane retired from teaching but has come back to Vassar this semester to finally finish the project with our current class.
So, here are the literal nuts and bolts of what all has to be done for Thoreau’s Cabin to be finished by the end of the semester:
- Dig holes for and set posts
- Measure, cut, and then build in floor joists
- Attach plywood subfloor
- Measure, cut, and build wall frames
- Attach wall frames to exterior wall paneling
- Insulate walls and ceiling
- Build out loft and ceiling
- Finish walls with plaster
- Finish floor with final top layer
- Dig out irrigation trenches
- + 100 little details that we’ll find along the way
Well, we’re halfway through the semester and have so far completed everything through the insulation, meaning we’re fairly on schedule. But, every time I’ve mentioned this class to a friend of mine, a professor, or someone completely unconnected to Vassar, I always hear the same thing: why? To understand our “why,” and particularly why we are using these specific methods, it’s easiest to go to the source material itself, which brings us to Walden Pond.
Henry David Thoreau was a naturalist and writer who lived the majority of his life in Concord, Massachusetts. Commonly associated with the Transcendalists, Thoreau convened often with fellow writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller throughout the early and mid-1800s to shape the ideas of naturalism in scholarship. Due to his death at a very early age, Thoreau only published a few major works along with his many essays on subjects ranging anywhere from apples (“Wild Apples”) to his attempted ascent of the mountain Katahdin in Maine (“Ktaadn”). Of these major works, there’s no question that he is most widely known for Walden, his book detailing his experience living alone in a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond for several years in the middle of his life. During his years at Walden, Thoreau wrote furiously, producing many of his essays and major works while living in the cabin he built himself. He aspired to live a life of minimalism and attempted to be as self-sufficient as possible during this time, planting and harvesting a field of beans and vegetables which he used to feed himself almost entirely. He is most understood now as a hippie of sorts who wanted to commune with nature and submit himself to a simple life ruled by nature’s laws. However, Thoreau also believed in the importance of friendship, economy, and travel, spending a good portion of his life studying everything he could on such subjects and more: Thoreau was a large proponent of the abolitionist movement and the attempt to accurately tell Native American stories.
This past weekend, our Vassar class traveled to Concord to visit Walden Pond and other historical remnants of Thoreau’s life including the original site of his cabin, the current official replica of the cabin, and the Emerson House where Thoreau lived for several years with his good friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. To actually be in the place where Thoreau lived and wrote his major works on life and nature was a clarifying experience and created a kinship between myself and the man we’ve been studying. It is a much different experience to walk the paths Thoreau and Emerson walked together 200 years ago than it is to simply read about them, and it brings a particular light to Thoreau’s outlook on life. To commune with nature isn’t to simply submit yourself to it, but to live alongside it.
So, why are we building the cabin? Well, the answer is complicated, but, for me, it is to honor Thoreau’s way of life. To quote him: “How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?” Our class is not only a study of construction and Thoreau, it is a study in the experiment of living. By all at once engaging both the head and hands in study, we invoke Thoreau’s hopes for the students of his age and the future. It is one thing to read books and study in classrooms but quite another to delve into the physical and create something that will stand for many decades after you have finished your studies. Thoreau believed in a well-rounded student in and outside of the traditional classroom, and that is exactly what we are attempting to accomplish through our replica.
At the end of the semester, our class is planning on throwing a party to officially open the cabin to the Vassar public after it is finished. In the meantime, if you want to check it out, we’re located near the rugby field on the Preserve. Feel free to take the walk over, and I strongly encourage you to contemplate your natural surroundings as you do. It is the Thoreauvian way after all.