My “Best” Room

Henry David Thoreau is most famously known for his short stint in Walden Pond which produced his canonical work Walden. I had the pleasure of studying Walden through an environmentalist lens as part of my education and found much solace in ways in which the simplicity of building and describing home informed my life. Although Thoreau’s intent when publishing Walden was to express and further promote a life lived simply, there is much complication and hard work to his experience. The reemergence of tiny homes and influencers building out vans for themselves and their cats to travel the country in nods in metaphor to the goals in which Thoreau built his house just the same. With just a bed, a desk, a lamp, and three chairs, life was lived simply amongst the 10’ x 15’ frame of the house on Walden Pond. It begs to question what we define as the needs of a home are today. Working in the interior design industry, I find much correlation with the language of Walden’s intent in taglines of firms. Lines like “Life lived well” “Simple Comfortable Interiors”, but what does that really mean. Thoreau might argue that it means just a room and a bed and the simplicity of solitude, alone.