Ken Ilgunas (AM 2011) reading from "Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom"

When Ken Ilgunas got out from under undergraduate student debt, he enrolled in the Duke MALS program. Inspired by Thoreau and determined to remain debt-free, he moved into a 1994 Ford Econoline van, his "Walden on Wheels." There he secretly lived in a campus parking lot, where he put to use the many lessons about frugality and simplicity and adventure that he'd learned on his journeys before. Ken speaks of the "two different educations" he received at Duke: "The first was an education in vandwelling, in loneliness, in frugality, in figuring out how to wash my pots and pans without running water. The second was an education in liberal studies, in Diogenes, in Rousseau, in Zora Neale Hurston, in writing, speaking, and thinking. Yet it wasn't long before these educations came together, like two rivers meeting at a confluence and flowing together as one."Books will be available for purchase.