I don’t remember when I first read Walden; it seems like I’ve known it forever, embedded as it is in so many aspects of American culture. I thought of it again in 2009, as I neared retirement after 20 years of teaching in Japan. While browsing in a Tokyo bookshop, I found a beautiful hardcover, annotated copy of Walden*. Like Thoreau, I felt I was starting an experiment as I left Tokyo, one of the largest cities in the world. My initial plan was to move to rural Colorado to a small off-grid cabin that I had bought 7 years earlier.
Thoreau’s cabin was only a couple of miles from his family home in Concord. Mine was thousands of miles away from Japan, but I already knew this part of the country, starting in the 90s, when my long-time friend Linda bought 50 acres of land between the small towns of Guffey and Florissant, about 50 miles west of Colorado Springs. She soon bought a log cabin to live in and made the place her home. She named her homestead Little Horse.
I would visit during my summer vacations from teaching. One summer (2002), feeling I had no real home anymore, apart from my rented apartment in Tokyo, I asked Linda if she would mind my putting an RV on her land. She readily agreed, and we drove to Fairplay, the Park County seat, where we ordered a Cavco park model RV. Made of well-insulated wood and equipped with all necessary wiring, ducts and pipes, it arrived the following August. I was delighted to have the first home I had ever owned.
Like Thoreau, I did not own the land. Thoreau built his cabin on land owned by his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was granted use of the land in return for helping clean up brush and deadwood. Unlike me, Thoreau was an accomplished builder, able to make a solid structure, mostly from salvage, and erecting it with a little help from his friends. For me, there was no question of building one myself due. Lacking any real building skills, I was still working most of the year in Japan.
August, 2003: I named my cabin Mudbiscuit—can’t remember who thought of it first. This unusual moniker is a hybrid of Seabiscuit (a popular movie that first year about an unlikely winning horse) and mud—for the mud that ensnared the delivery truck after an intense afternoon rain, forcing the driver to camp on the land until morning. In the morning, he carefully positioned it, one long side facing southwest for light and heat, about 100 yards from Linda’s cabin. Mudbiscuit's arrival, coming down the Little Horse driveway:
During the following years, I had more than a little help from friends and skilled workers. Key people—both friends and skilled mountain builders—were Linda’s sister, Barbara Lane and her husband Reed Arnold. Much of the work they did themselves or contracted out to someone else who would do a job cheaply and well. Each subsequent summer, I made short, 7–10 day visits, and decided on an addition that would be ordered and done during the year: skirting, solar panels and batteries, a septic system, propane heaters (as the existing ductwork, designed for electric connections in trailer parks, seemed noisy and unsuitable for my situation), a deck adjoining the sliding doors, and a cistern. At first, there was little furniture: a table and chairs, a lamp and a borrowed bed; next came a fridge and stove. One year I invested in thermal shades and braided rugs.
While Linda was the only other human on Little Horse, I enjoyed having guests. In this photo, Linda (left) joined me and my good friend Bobbe for a breakfast smoothie one morning. I believe I had 3 chairs, like Thoreau, who said one was for solitude, two for visiting, and three for society.
I had non-human neighbors as well. Jill and Jim Durham, who live across the road, brought 6 elderly llamas over to graze for the summer. Mostly they stayed a distance away from the cabin, but sometimes let me get close, which pleased me a lot. I loved watching them watch me.
My initial plan was to live simply and economically for half of the year, (summer) while traveling and continuing to teach abroad as a volunteer during the colder seasons. Even before I returned, however, I had abandoned that plan, realizing that it was time for me to re-acculturate to the US and begin a new life post-retirement. Between the summer of 2010, when I officially changed my address, to the present day, I have spent summers and early fall here, leaving for winter travel or sojourns in Denver.**
By the time I was ready to officially move back to the US in the summer of 2010, Mudbiscuit was quite livable, though improvements have continued over the past 5 years: An enclosed front porch, a small front deck and stairway, a continually revised water system, and most recently, an upgraded solar system (2 new panels and new batteries). Indoors, there are more appliances and furniture. Linda and I have also shared an Internet account for the past several years as well.
Thoreau would no doubt laugh at what would certainly seem like pretensions to a simple life. More on that in the next installment.
*Houghton Mifflin (1995), Ed. by Walter Harding
**As of fall, 2014, I now live most of the year in a studio apartment in Denver’s Capitol Hill. I now own one tiny house and rent another.
**As of fall, 2014, I now live most of the year in a studio apartment in Denver’s Capitol Hill. I now own one tiny house and rent another.
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