Woggy Project #9: Mini Walden

Any of you who might have happened to view my profile are probably aware that a book I consider to have been among the most influential in my life is Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I first read it as required reading in eleventh grade, and the impact of its words were so profound on my life that I continued to remember many passages quite clearly into my adulthood, even though I did not actually sit down to read it again until a year or two ago.

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation."

That passage in particular, along with the similarly-minded philosophy of the entire book, had an immense impact on my teenage self. It was as if all at once I finally had discovered in those words the exact pinpointing of that amorphous feeling I had been acutely aware of throughout much of my life up until then. It spoke directly and succinctly to what was actually wrong with the philosophies I had been raised to lead my life by and explained in just a few small words the knowledge I had always carried somehow in me that I would never be able to live that kind of life. Rather miraculously to me at the time, Thoreau seemed to offer up with his words a mature, thoughtful, specific, and directed version of the very undirected and nascent hope and rage I carried around with me every day, and which up until that point in my life I really had little idea of what I was supposed to do with.

I realized suddenly that the "problem" with me, with my understanding of things, of my difficulties with many people, was not me at all, really. It was a difference of philosophy. "Most" lived in "quiet desperation"; they chose to live that way, sleeping, not paying attention. People like me, though, people like this mysterious guy writing this book, we were aware of this fact, knew such a life was wrong for us, and therefore had a very specific choice, and that was to instead live our lives "deliberately". This realization was for me, quite akin to a spiritual revelation. Looking back on it now as an adult, I now know that's because that's exactly what it was.

I decided quite deliberately the day I first read those words, and have continued to hold that belief ever since, that I would never, no matter what I ended up doing in life, live a life of "quiet desperation."

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

But now I'm sure you're wondering, what does this have to do with a woggy project? A year or two ago, realizing how odd it was that I did not actually own a copy of the most important book I had ever read, I finally bought a nice copy and reread it cover to cover. Doing so was a very healing balm for a me that by that point in my life had become quite scattered. This was of course one of a vast series of things in my life setting me back aright, but nonetheless it was still a significant reread for me.

Around the same time I had already begun becoming interested in doing various miniature gardening projects. While I had always placed alot of small vignettes around my garden, it was seeing some really amazing miniature gardens at the local garden show that really piqued my interest in creating some specific mini garden projects around my patio garden. I live on the courtyard level of my building, with what I feel is a pretty nice-sized patio, but it is certainly no grand estate for planning major formal garden plans. Creating miniature gardens not only gave many interesting nooks and crannies to my garden, but also in a way has made the space seem larger, since these mini-gardens around the regular garden create an interesting sense of scale, making all of the larger things seem so much larger, and making every small space seem like a possible vast micro-sized world ready to explore.

Since I had reread Walden right around the same time I had started really getting into my mini-garden creations, it occured to me one day that one miniature project I might be able to undertake would be to build my own small home, a la Walden in miniature as both a fun garden project and a means of seeing through, to the best of my abilities, the lessons of building my own to-scale house, which while small could surely be built using all the same principles of building presented in the book. Besides a nice concrete spiritual exercise, I thought I might actually pick up some actual fundamental life skills in rudimentary building construction. While much of Walden is a philosophical treatise, it is also a quite explicit blueprint on how to build your own "house in the woods", at minimal costs with all the necessary comforts one needs to exist. From the number of boards used, to the manner hewn from trees, to the method for insulating for winter, Thoreau really left nothing to the imagination. He even fully documented his accounting, to show others how they might make an attempt to live as he did that year. It seemed with adjustments for scale and modern inflation, I should be able to create a miniature home by simply working through the book's more specific pages step by step.

I am not the first person to think of a mini-Walden. I found my best help in figuring out how to scale down the very explicit descriptions Thoreau offers in his book on the building he built himself with some folks who "built" their own mini-Walden via cardboard modeling.

So, I began collecting materials. I began my research. I started doing scale-model size calculations. I purchased a few small trees (the sort often used for bonsai gardens), and planned my plot. The plot it turned out, was a bit of an issue for me. Figuring exactly what sort of scale I would be building the mini-home to, what sort of trees would look scale to that, and what sort of pot I could put that in was a difficult bunch of calculations. I finished doing one set of calculations, only to realize at one point that since I would need to be purchasing premade windows (Thoreau did as well, buy completely framed used windows from a neighbor), and these only come in several specific sizes, I was going to have to build my home around the scale of whichever I purchased. And by the time I got done with all of that figuring, I found that the trees and the pot I had found were all way too small.

Also by then, the season had gotten late. Since I had figured on actually building my home directly on my dirt plot outdoors, I would, like Thoreau need to take season in to account, most sensibly beginning my project in the spring. due to this, and due to the fact that I was wondering if things weren't getting needlessly complicated by me (which after all seemed to be the opposite of this endeavor's intentions), I decided to table the project to the next spring.

"Our life is frittered away by detail."

Well, "next spring" was last spring, and while I thought about it a bit, I didn't set any part of my garden aside for it, and haven't given it too much thought since then. By now I can see if I am really going to do this, I will need to spend the winter making plans, actually choosing a location, and buying the materials that I can do ahead of time, if I am to ever get this project on its feet.

Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project

• Make a final decision on window scale
• Buy windows and any other similar needed items
• Figure out where the "acreage" will be
• Decide if I'm really going to attempt creating the cellar
• Draw up scale plans and final measurements
• Come spring, begin cellar (if doing) and cutting up wood pieces
• Continue building house throughout the spring and summer as per the book
• Plant seeds for garden, and tend
• Finish up chimney, insulation, and mortaring before november rains start
• Complete documenting project