An hour after deciding to drive back to Tennessee in one sleepless stretch, I had all of my possessions packed into trash bags and piled in the back of the van. I explained why I was leaving in a short breathless sentence. Saying my goodbyes out the window of the van, I only took the time to leave my host a copy of “A Place of My Own.” I told him to “take it, it’s a gift” rather than explaining what the book (and as an extension him) meant to me.
“A Place of My Own” by Michael Pollan is a collection of essays about an author building a writing shack in his backyard. He divides the building of the shack into “here” and “there”. The “here” represents the properties of the shack that are a response to the function of the space and its immediate surrounding area. Pollan discusses the depth of the footings — a component of foundation determined by the pitch of the hill, the weather and the firmness of the soil. The “there” elements of the shack are its aesthetic qualities, determined by architectural language, ideals found in nature, feng shui and Pollan’s individual taste.
Within the first chapter, Pollan stresses his lack of DIY knack. As a writer, he concerns himself with concepts, language and ideas rather than actual physical things:
“Apart from eating, gardening, short-haul driving, and sex, I generally prefer to delegate my commerce with the physical world to specialists; things seemed to work out better that way,” Pollan writes.
As one of my favorite “there” details, he explains the shack with stout side walls, which made it look like it was wedged between two bookshelves. The “there” sounds much less interesting than the “here,” but the process through which Pollan collapses his abstract vision of the shack into an actual physical object that has to withstand the weather, meet the requirements of building codes and stay under budget is fascinating.
I faced a similar task when I set out to convert a beat-up van into a camper. I had sold my car and bought it off my buddy that spring. His family was kind enough to host me and provide power tools until the van was roadworthy and livable. I spent my days working on the van, and in the afternoons I would review stories for a literary journal.
My buddy’s dad, who had worked as a programmer, frequently popped into the driveway to offer “”here”” advice. I had learned what an amp was a week before, and he helped me design a wiring harness hooked up to a 300-amp hour battery that easily could have barbecued me.
Despite my inexperience with actual construction, I had a definitive vision for the van. I included many of the traditional elements of a camper — a cooktop, an outdoor shower, a fridge — but I also designed a bed that folded into a bench and a bookshelf inspired by Pollan’s shack construction.
A bookshelf is incredibly impractical in any kind of moving vehicle. I drilled in a plywood veneer with rectangular openings smaller than the shelf itself to form a kind of lip that held the books in place. Their combined weight pitched the van to its left, but it is difficult for me to let go of books (a “here” issue I neglected).
Converting the van itself was in complete disregard to an almost infinite list of “here” issues. The van was painted about 12 different shades of off-white, the headlights were covered in a thick cataract of condensation and the engine made a horrific screech as you turned it over. It had an intense anthropomorphic quality that I might have hallucinated during my long hours spent baking in its cargo space. As I approached it each morning, its tired visage seemed to beg me not to invest so much time, money and effort into its rusting body. Despite the impracticality of the project, I never once considered abandoning it.
Pollan would have supported my project wholeheartedly. I came to love “A Place of My Own” by rereading dogeared passages that explored Pollan’s irrational desire to build the shack. He traces his desire for the shack all the way back to a treehouse his parents gifted him, which he loved because only a kid could shimmy up its rope ladder and crawl through its narrow trap door.
His parents designed his “temple of privacy and independence” to specifically be inaccessible to them. Influencing the construction of his new home, which he built in the traditional “post and beam” style, he required a group of helpers to raise the heavy timber beams.
I think the complicated dynamic between wanting a “place of your own” and inevitably having to rely on the help of others occupies a lot of college students, especially those about to graduate. The intense desire to “strike out on your own” is often antithetical to the need for community support.
This irony was even more intense in my scenario. I had built the camper to be completely off-grid, drawing energy from solar panels and the car’s alternator — I even considered designing a rainwater collection system — but I was entirely reliant on my buddy’s family’s tools, driveway and tolerance for chaos. Building my temple of independence involved me operating a circular saw that made a high-pitched whine and spraying sawdust all over their driveway.
“ Building my temple of independence involved me operating a circular saw that made a high-pitched whine and spraying sawdust all over their driveway. ”
I gifted my buddy’s dad “A Place of My Own” to capture how meaningful his help was. On the way back to school, I swung by the house to say hi. I showed him the improvements made to the van, and he showed me a tool shed he had built in the backyard. I may be overly sentimental, but the tool shed felt reminiscent of Pollan’s writer shack. Despite entering retirement and seeing his youngest son enter his senior year of college, he still felt a pull to construct a little corner of his backyard that felt entirely his own.
Liam Riley PO ’26 is from East Tennessee. He likes giving book recommendations, the outdoors and shenanigans. Reach out to him if you want to help build an underground sauna in his buddy’s backyard.
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