Henry Thoreau’s experiment at Walden Pond is as inseparable from the small house he built there as it is from the pond itself. But what was the meaning of the house at Walden? In this course, we take the Walden hut as our North Star in a triangulation of points spanning the American Wisdom Tradition from before the beginning to after the end. We examine the Virginia House in the Tidewater, the Walden hut in Concord, and the Innermost House in California to locate an archetypal form central to the New World culture of philosophical simplicity: the Primitive Hut in America. Registration required.