Dreaming Bigger: A Tiny House?

To me, Martin Luther King Day is about having big, audacious dreams.  Napoleon once purportedly claimed that the job of a Leader is to "define reality and to give hope."  In order to define a reality different than the present, one must be able to dream big dreams.  Martin Luther King, Jr., had big dreams and gave people hope for a better future.  Similarly, Henry David Thoreau dreamt of a simpler way of life.

One of the very first books I read when I moved to Northern Virginia (from Evansville, IN) was 'Walden,' by Henry David Thoreau.  I was not aware of the irony surrounding my reading of that book - in Northern Virginia - until just at this moment.  Northern Virginia real estate is outrageously expensive (albeit not quite like like San Francisco or New York, thankfully!).  Nevertheless, the cost of having a roof over one's head in the United States of America is prohibitively expensive almost everywhere.

Reflecting back on Thoreau's experiment on Walden Pond: even then, he saw a possibility of carving out a cheaper, more sustainable, harmonious existence without the need for having one's life tied to a bank mortgage or other debt and restrictions.  On this idea, I find Thoreau's experiment of living in the woods using his own wits, ingenuity and hard work extremely simple and common sensical, yet ingenious at the same time.  What would it be like to experience and undertake a similar experiment in our own life?

I'm not a fan-boy of the Tiny House movement.  Shoot, my aim is to build a big 'ole castle on our property one day.  But I don't want to be beholden to a bank note or Venture Capitalists to make it happen.  Live Free or Die!  I feel like there is freedom in discipline (ala Jocko Willink) and minimalism.  In our video below, we dream a little bit about some of our possibilities at Ca Ira Castle along these lines.

Perhaps 'dreaming bigger', in the context of housing, is the idea of living a life of true freedom through significant reductions in the overhead associated with the outrageous cost of living in America, vis-a-vis a tiny (read 'affordable') house.