Mein Barcelona_Juli_2017

112
Words
Nina MacLaughlin
Photos
Ian MacLellan
Potanipo Pond lies about an hour’s
drive north-west of Boston. The scent of
blooming meadows is in the air, alongside
a denser aroma: hay, mud, manure. Two
farmers stand by a fence, hands on hips,
looking at livestock. Take away the power
lines overhead and it could be 1845, the
year writer Henry David Thoreau (who
would have been 200 years old this
summer) built a hut among trees by the
side of another lake near Boston, and
began two years of living the simple life.
In Walden, the book he wrote about
his time living minimally in the woods,
he talks of sucking all the marrow out of
life. The book was named after Walden
Pond, the lake at the centre of his story,
and today it’s still a bible for modern-day
dropouts and downshifters.
Architectural consultant Tracey Powell
(38) is by no means a dropout. Yet two
years ago she built a house 14m 2 in size,
the same as Thoreau’s pondside cabin. It
took her six months’ worth of weekends
to build with her brother. Having grown
up in an RV in a trailer park, both were
familiar with space restrictions. Powell has
fond memories of the time and later took
a close look at Thoreau’s cabin during her
architecture degree. Now her own mini
home stands by the side of Potanipo Pond,
among trees and next to a babbling creek.
So far, so Thoreau. But the resemblance to
Walden’s rustic romance doesn’t go much
further. Her house is part of a community
of mobile homes sat next to each other on
tight lots. And its interior is very much 21st
century. “Alexa, turn the music off,” Powell
says into the air to her electronic PA.