Wednesday May 29^th ,

Today was a rain day and as the last rain day left me stranded without a plan, Mr. Esty and I agreed that I should head down to Walden Pond and go see the replica of Thoreau’s house. I had already read the section of Walden about building the house on my first day and wanted to see for myself what it looked like. So I set out to see what the finished product of my work at Pingree would resemble and began my journey down the I-95 super speedway.  Then I went through swirly, twirly route 2A, where I came upon the familiar sight of construction. Soon I found Walden Pond and began my trek from the car past about six trees to the small house on the side of a well paved road. All I could think was “ Mr. Esty would deem this a real Thoreauvian journey”.  I couldn’t help but draw similarities to the Pingree House and where it was going to be built, due to the fact that it would also be surrounded by man-made objects. Thoreau’s dream of a life alone in nature has been replaced with a road, a parking lot, an automated parking ticket machine and of course the restroom right across from the house.  I mean, they couldn’t even make it look like an outhouse? Due to the length of my journey, I was faced with the dilemma of sticking to Thoreau’s ideals and digging a hole next to the house and doing my business there or using the restrooms with running water. Sadly, the only Thoreau like thing that I would be doing this day was going inside his house.

Based on my interpretation of the reading I thought the house would be slightly bigger and seemed more finished then I would have thought it would but overall it was as expected. The logs bark left on one side and a small chimney. I think that if you put some of the wilderness back and most likely some of the deer I could probably learn to survive however the realities of myself alone in the woods probably wouldn’t settle in till about the third day on the brink of starvation. It is hard to image a replica at Pingree, mostly because in my lifetime going to Pingree, since I was about 4 or 5, the few changes to Pingree were a science wing and a hall way to the gym. However the Pingree replica would be about the same as the other replica and have the similar views of all man-made objects.