The Sleep Retreat: Relaxing Bedtime Stories & Sounds · James Wolner | Sleep Podcast Creator: Guided Meditations & Bedtime Stories

Gull Harbor: Thoreau Relaxing Story - Walden Economy Part 3

·2 hr·4 clips

Thoreau claims he was “more independent than any farmer in Concord” because he was not anchored to a house or farm.

It begins with an invitation to drift off. A warm afternoon at Grandma and Grandpa's at Gull Harbor sets the scene. You are imagined lying back on a warm futon mattress at one end of a screened-in porch. From there, the porch looks out over the harbor, the bay, and the ocean on the horizon. A small reading nook is waiting for kids. Its shelves hold comics, magazines, crosswords, children's books, and both new and worn copies. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew sit beside books about drugs, dinosaurs, horses, sea life, and summer adventures. A blue transistor radio rests near puzzles and board games. A wooden box holds cards, dice, jacks, and tiny pencils worn down by use. The narrator eases the room into stillness with breath cues. Eyes close. The chest is asked to rise and fall gently. Deeper breaths follow, with a hold and a slow release. After that opening hush, the reading moves into Thoreau's account of house building. The mood shifts from harbor quiet to a long inventory of shanty boards, shingles, laths, windows, brick, lime, hair, iron, nails, hinges, screws, chalk, and transportation. The house is measured at ten by fifteen, with a garret, a closet, a window on each side, two trap doors, one door, and a brick fireplace. Its exact cost is given as 28 dollars and 12 and one half cents. Much of the carrying is said to have happened on his back. He also points to a woodshed made from leftovers and argues that a shelter can be had for a lifetime at less than rent. The close turns to the sharp answer about living on bored nails, then to raw corn, squirrels, and the uneasy objections of people who would rather not try the experiment.

As heard by us

A harbor-side sleep story that moves from porch quiet into Thoreau's house-cost arithmetic.

A warm harbor-side sleep scene carries the piece, with a futon on a screened-in porch, a small reading nook, worn books, puzzles, board games, and a radio all set out to slow the mind before the reading turns to Thoreau's house costs and plain talk about simple living.

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Why you'd press play

A porch-side sleep story that turns into Thoreau's house ledger.

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