Thoreau's cabin

He began building April 1845. It was torn down after he left, but you can see the site. He bought the wood from the Irish railroad laborers for $4.25. They used dirt for their insulation so he cleaned the boards and dried them on the beach. He planted crops. He would go home to the Thoreau family house less than a mile away at night. The first day after he'd dug the foundation was an old fashioned building party, and many came to help him begin to build. Maybe the first tiny house. 

Replica:

Emerson said civilized people didn't live in a shanty. Thoreau saw it as a home. His sisters worried about him. They brought him some food, and he wasn't happy they did that. (I'm reading Walls' biography so that is my source.)

I wonder how much he wanted to get away from being cared for by his lovely sisters. How much he wanted to be self reliant. To live a minimalist lifestyle and yet focus his attention. 

Links:

Thoreau's Cabin Site

Photos of a replica built

Richard Smith

Thoreau's Leaves: The Journal read.

Thoreau wrote a poem called Walden:

WALDEN

True, our converse a stranger is to speech;

Only the practiced ear can catch the surging words

That break and die upon thy pebbled lips.

Thy flow of thought is noiseless as the lapse of thy own waters,

Wafted as is the morning mist up from thy surface,

So that the passive Soul doth breathe it in,

And is infected with the truth thou wouldst express.

E'en the remotest stars have come in troops

And stooped low to catch the benediction

Of thy countenance. Oft as the day came round,

Impartial has the sun exhibited himself

Before thy narrow skylight; nor has the moon

For cycles failed to roll this way

As oft as elsewhither, and tell thee of the night.

No cloud so rare but hitherward it stalked,

And in thy face looked doubly beautiful.

O! tell me what the winds have writ for the last thousand years

On the blue vault that spans thy flood,

Or sun transferred and delicately reprinted

For thy own private reading. Somewhat

Within these latter days I've read,

But surely there was much that would have thrilled the Soul,

Which human eye saw not.

I would give much to read that first bright page,

Wet from a virgin press, when Eurus, Boreas,

And the host of airy quill-drivers

First dipped their pens in mist.

Source. Love the use of elsewither and hitherward.