Justin S. Bailey

A lot of great observations here, especially the parts about the cabin being a metaphor and the recognition that we have some control to essentially simulate that which we desire most out of the cabin in the woods, right where we are.

Thoreau has had an outsized role in my life, and I've written a fair amount about it (we even named our son Walden) along with Jon Krakauer's 'Into the Wild.' The desire to escape modernity is something I've reflected on a lot over the years and is interestingly always changing in my mind as I age. As I now see it, I think it has something to do with our innate desire for novelty and autonomy, but I think there's also something paradoxical here: Even if we could all escape to our imagined versions of the cabin in the woods, we'd perhaps find that the honeymoon phase might also soon fade, and we'd begin imagining another novel experience, one where we are trying to once again obtain our autonomy.