About Walden
AI Can’t Build a Fire.
Long before feeds and followers, people gathered around fire to tell stories, settle the day, and be together. We build for that.
What we believe
Around one, people still get real.
Fire is the oldest gathering technology there is. For thousands of years it has done what no app has managed since: pull people into a circle, slow them down, and get them talking about things that matter. That was the first social network, and it never needed a login.
We’re not anti-technology, and this is not a lecture. What we make is an invitation: here’s a place to set it down for an hour. The more of life that happens through a screen, the more that hour is worth.
Backyarding®
The power of pause
Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately. We think a backyard can do the same job. Walden doesn’t really sell fire pits and pokers — we sell the reason humans have gathered around fire since there have been humans: real, unmediated time with your people. A fire that draws the family out of the house. Friends you haven’t seen in a year, talking like it was yesterday by the second log.
We call the practice Backyarding® — the deliberate act of doing less, outside, together. The tools are steel and hardwood, made to be handed down when you’re done. The tools are how; the hour is why.
Built by people who know what the pause is worth
Walden Backyards is a veteran-owned company, founded by Erik May. Military service teaches you what distance from the people you love actually costs — and what it’s worth to close it. Erik built Walden around one mission: bring people back together. Deliberately unfinishable, because there’s always another fire worth lighting.
That’s not a polished brand with a spokesperson. That’s a real person making tools that pull people back to the same fire — steel and hardwood, made to be used hard and handed down, by somebody who means the mission statement.
Hold us to these
Three promises
01
Every fire you see is real
No AI-generated photos or videos in our marketing — ever. Real people, real fires, real evenings, or it doesn’t run.
02
The knowledge is free
Everything we know about building, tending, and cooking over fire is in the Almanac, no purchase required. Teach it forward.
03
Invitation, never lecture
Your phone is welcome in the backyard — it’s just not the guest of honor. If our marketing ever makes you feel judged instead of invited, we got it wrong.
Start with the fire
Most people meet Walden through the Stoker Poker® — the patent-pending fire tool you blow through. It’s the best seat at the fire, guaranteed.
Meet the Stoker Poker