It was a discovery of enormous magnitude and considering the quakes that would reverberate through the literary community it caught the interest of many scholars. The investigation went on for weeks as biographers, anthropologists and sex therapists wandered through the mud deep into the woods to a tiny shack, to
the
tiny shack. Once there they studied the writings on abandoned manuscripts, the notes scribbled on the rickety furniture and the odd and sometimes obscene poetry written on the walls. Handwriting and literary experts who studied the penmanship and the writing styles confirmed what everyone else had wondered, had guessed, had wished for: this shack was indeed the very shack inhabited by Henry David Thoreau's third cousin Marcus Attabury Troy while living and writing his not so classic, almost masterpiece
Condom
.
While it is well known that the house Thoreau built on Walden Pond was given to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who sold it to his gardener, who later sold it to two farmers who eventually dismantled the home for scrap lumber, the existence of the shack was a long hidden episode in the Walden drama. The shack his cousin built on Condom Pond remained a myth known only to the most dedicated and knowledgeable historians. Only with the discovery of this shack could the scholars confirm their suspicions about Thoreau's supposedly solitary life at Walden.