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21 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Chapter sixteen, The Pond in winter. After a still night, I awoke
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with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had
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been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what, how,
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when, where? But there was dawning nature in whom all creatures live,
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looking in at my broad windows, with serene and satisfied face, and no
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question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question to nature, and
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daylight, the snow lying deep on the earth, dotted with young pines,
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and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed seemed to
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say forward. Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.
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She has long ago taken her resolution. O Prince, our eyes contemplate with
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admiration, and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe.
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The night veils, without doubt a part of this glorious creation. But
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day comes to reveal to us this great work which extends from earth even into
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the plains of the ether. Then to my morning work. First I take
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an ax and pail and go in search of water. If that be not
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a dream. After a cold and snowy night, it needed a divining rod
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to find it. Every winter, the liquid and trembling surface of the pond,
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which was so sensitive to every breath and reflected every light and shadow,
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becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half,
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so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it
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to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level
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field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and
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becomes dormant for three months or more. Standing on the snow covered plain,
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as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through
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a foot of snow and then a foot of ice, and open a window
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under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the
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quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softening light, as through a
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window of ground glass with its bright sanded floor. The same as in summer.
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There a perennial, waveless serenity rains, as in the amber twilight sky,
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corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under
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our feet as well as over our heads early in the morning, while all
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things are crisp with frost. Men come with fishing reels in slender lunch,
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and let down their fine lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch.
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Wild Men who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen,
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and by their goings and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they
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would be ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear knots on
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the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in local lore, as
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the citizen is in artificial They never consulted with books, and know and can
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tell much less than they have done. The things which they practice are said
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not yet to be known. Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch
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for bait. You look into his pale with wonder, as into a summer
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pond, as if he kept summer locked up at home or new where she
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had retreated. How pray did he get these in mid winter? Oh?
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He got worms out of rotten logs, since the ground froze, and so
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he caught them. His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of
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the naturalist penetrate himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss
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and bark gently with his knife in search of insects. The former lays open
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logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and
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wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some
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right to fish, and I loved to see nature carried out in him.
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The perch swallows the grubworm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman
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swallows the pickerel, and so all the chin in the scale of being are
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filled. When I strolled around the pond in misty weather, I was sometimes
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amused by the primitive mode which some ruder fishermen had adopted. He would perhaps
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have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which were four
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or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore, and having fastened
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the end of the line to a stick to prevent it being pulled through,
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have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder a foot or more
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above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which,
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being pulled down, would show. When he had a bite. These alders
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loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you walked halfway around the pond ah
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the pickerel of Walden. When I see them lying on the ice, or
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in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole
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to admit the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as
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if they were fabulous fishes. They are so foreign to the streets, even
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to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our concord life. They possess a
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quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous
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cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green
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like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky.
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But they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors
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like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized
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nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course are Walden all
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over and all through, are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom Walden's is.
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It is surprising that they are caught here, that in this deep and
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capacious spring. Far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel
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the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced
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to see its kind in any market. It would be the cinosure of all
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eyes. There easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their
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watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of
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heaven. As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond,
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I surveyed it carefully before the ice broke up early in forty six,
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with compass and chain and sounding line. There have been many stories told about
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the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had
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no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable how long men will believe in the
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bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited
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two such bottomless ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. Many have believed that
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Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. Some who have
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lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking down through the elusive
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medium, perchance with watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions
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by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes into
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which a load of hay might be driven if there were anybody to drive it,
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the undoubted source of the sticks and entrance to the infernal regions. From
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these parts, others have gone down from the village with a fifty six and
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a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom,
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for while the fifty six was resting by the way, they were paying
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out the rope in the vein attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable capacity for marvelousness.
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But I can assure my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at
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a not unreasonable, though at an unusual depth. I fathomed it easily with
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a cod line and a stone weighing about a pound and a half, and
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could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom by having to pull so much
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harder before the water got underneath to help me. The greatest depth was exactly
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one hundred and two feet, to which may be added the five feet which
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it has risen since making one hundred and seven. This is a remarkable depth
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for so small an area, yet not an inch of it can be spared
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by the imagine nation. What if all ponds were shallow, would it not
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react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made
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deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite, some
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ponds will be thought to be bottomless. A factory owner, hearing what depth
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I had found, thought that it could not be true, for judging from
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his acquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so steep an angle.
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But the deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to their area as most
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suppose, and if drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys. They are
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not like cups between the hills. For this one, which is so unusually
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deep for its area, appears in a vertical section through its center, not
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deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds emptied would leave a s meadow no
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more hollow than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who is so admirable in
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all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct, standing at the head
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of Loch Fine in Scotland, which he describes as a bay of salt water
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sixty or seventy fathoms deep, four miles in breadth, and about fifty miles
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long, surrounded by mountains. Observes, if we could have seen it immediately
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after the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it before the waters
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gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it have appeared, so high as
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heaved the tumid hills, so low down sunk a hollow bottom, broad and
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deep, capacious bed of waters. But if using the shortest diameter of loch
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Fine, we apply these proportions to Walden, which is we have seen,
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appears already in a vertical section only like a shallow plate, it will appear
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four times as shallow. So much for the increased horrors of the chasm of
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Loch Fine. When emptied, no doubt many a smiling valley, with its
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stretching corn fields, occupies exactly such a horrid chasm from which the waters have
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receded, though it requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist to
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convince the unsuspecting inhabitant of this fact. Often an inquisitive eye may detect the
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shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation
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of the plain have been necessary to conceal their history. But it is easiest
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as they who work on the highways know to find the hollows by the puddles
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after a shower. The amount of it is the imagination give it the least
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license. Dives deeper and soars higher than nature goes. So probably the depth
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of the ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared with its breadth.
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As I sounded through the ice, I could determine the shape of the bottom
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with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over,
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and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part, there
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are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun,
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wind and plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen,
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the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods, and generally
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near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in
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any direction beforehand, within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak
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of the deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but
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the effect of water under these circumstances is to level all inequalities. The regularity
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of the bottom and its conformity to the shores, and the range of the
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neighboring hills were so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite
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across the pond, and its direction could be determined by observing the opposite shore.
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Cape becomes bar and plain, shoal and valley, and gorge, deep
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water and channel. When I had mapped to the pond by the scale of
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ten rods to an inch, and put down the soundings more than a hundred
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in all, I observed this remarkable coincidence. Having noticed that the number indicating
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the greatest depth was apparently in the center of the map, I laid a
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rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and found to my surprise
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that the line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the
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point of greatest depth. Notwithstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the
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outline of the pond far from regular, and the extreme length and breadth were
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got by measuring into the coves. And I said to myself, who knows
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but this hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as
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of a pond or puddle. Is not this the rule also for the height
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of mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys, we know that a hill
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is not highest at its narrowest part. Of five coves, three or all
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which had been sounded, were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths,
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and deeper water within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion
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of water within the land, not only horizontally but vertically, and form a
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basin or independent pond. The direction of the two capes showing the course of
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the bar. Every harbor on the sea coast also has its bar at its
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entrance. In proportion, as the mouth of the cove was wider compared with
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its length, the water over the bar was deeper compared with that in the
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basin. Given then the length and breadth of the cove and the character of
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the surrounding shore, and you have almost elements enough to make out a formula
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for all cases. In order to see how nearly I could guess with this
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experience, at the deepest point in a pond by observing the outlines of a
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surface and the character of its shores alone. I made a plan of white
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pond, which contains about forty one acres, and like this has no island
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in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet. And as the line of
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greatest breadth fell very near the line of least breadth, where two opposite capes
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approached each other, and two opposite bays receded, I ventured to mark a
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point a short distance from the latter line, but still on the line of
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greatest length, as the deepest the deepest part was found to be within one
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hundred feet of this still farther in the direction to which I had inclined,
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and was only one foot deeper, namely sixty feet. Of course, a
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stream running through or an island in the pond would make the problem much more
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complicated. If we knew all the laws of nature, we should need only
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one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon to infer all the particular
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results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our
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result is vitiated, not of course, by any confusion or irregularity in nature,
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but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation our notions of law
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and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect. But the harmony
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which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting but really concurring laws which
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we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as
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our points of view. As to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with
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each step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but
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one form, even when cleft or bored through, it is not comprehended in
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its entireness. What I have observed of the pond is no less true.
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In ethics, it is the law of average. Such a rule of the
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two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart
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in man, but draws lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of
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a man's particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets,
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And where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character. Perhaps
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we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances
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to infer his depth and concealed bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainous circumstances,
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an achillean shore whose peaks over shadow and are reflected in his bosom.
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They suggest a corresponding depth in him, But a low and smooth shore proves
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him shallow on that side. In our bodies, a bold projecting brow falls
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off to and indicates a corresponding depth of thought. Also, there is a
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bar across the entrance of our every cove or particular inclination. Each is our
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harbor for a season in which we are detained and partially land locked. These
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inclinations are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and direction are
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determined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes of elevation. When
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this bar is gradually increased by storms, tides, or currents, or there
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is a subsidence of the waters so that it reaches to the surface, that
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which was at first but an inclination in the shore in which a thought was
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harbored becomes an individual lake cut off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures
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its own conditions, changes perhaps from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea,
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dead sea, or a marsh at the advent of each individual into this
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life. May we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the surface
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somewhere. It is true we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for
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the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant
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only with the bites of the bays of Poesy or steer for the public ports
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of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely
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refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them. As
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for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not discovered any but rain
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and snow in avap operation, though perhaps with a thermometer and a line,
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such places may be found. For where the water flows into the pond,
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it will probably be coldest in summer and warmest in winter. When the ice
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men were at work here in forty six forty seven, the cakes sent to
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the shore were one day rejected by those who were stacking them up there,
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not being thick enough to lie side by side with the rest, and the
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cutters thus discovered that the ice over a small space was two or three inches
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thinner than elsewhere, which made them think that there was an inlet there.
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They also showed me in another place what they thought was a leech hole through
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which the pond leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing me
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out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity
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under ten feet of water. But I think that I can warrant the pond
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not to need soldering till they find a worse leak than that. One has
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suggested that if such a leech hole should be found, its connection with the
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meadow, if any existed, might be proved by conveying some colored powder or
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sawdust to the mouth of the hole, and then putting a strainer over the
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spring in the meadow, which would catch some of the particles carried through by
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the current. While I was surveying the ice, which was sixteen inches thick
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undulated under a slight wind like water. It is well known that a level
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cannot be used on ice at one rod from the shore. Its greatest fluctuation,
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when observed by means of a level on land directed toward a graduated staff
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on the ice, was three quarters of an inch. Though the ice appeared
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firmly attached to the shore. It was probably greater in the middle. Who
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knows, But if our instruments were delicate enough, we might not detect an
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undulation in the crust of the earth. When two legs of my level were
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on the shore and the third on the ice, and the sights were directed
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over the latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal
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amount made a difference of several feet on a tree across the pond. When
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I began to cut holes for sounding, there were three or four inches of
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water on the ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far.
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But the water began immediately to run into these holes, and continued to run
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for two days in deep streams, which wore away the ice on every side,
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and contributed essentially, if not mainly, to dry the surface of the
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pond. For as the water ran in, it raised and floated the ice.
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This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship to
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let the water out. When such holes freeze and a rain succeeds, and
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finally a new freezing forms a fresh, smooth ice. Over All, it
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is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures shaped somewhat like a spider's web, what
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you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water.
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Flowing from all sides to a center. Sometimes, also when the ice was
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covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, one standing
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on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other on
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the trees or hillside. While yet it is cold January, and snow and
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ice are thick and solid. The prudent landlord comes from the village to get
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ice to cool his summer drink, impressively, even pathetically wise to foresee the
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heat and thirst of July now in January, wearing a thick coat and mittens,
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when so many things are not provided for, it may be that he
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lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink. In
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the next. He cuts and saws the solid pool, un roofs the house
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of the fishes, and carts off their very element and air, held fast
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by chains and stakes like corded wood, through the favoring winter air to wintry
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cellars to underlie the summer. There it looks like solidified azure as far off
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it is drawn through the streets. These ice cutters are a merry race,
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full of jest and sport. And when I went among them, they were
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wont to invite me to saw pit fashion with them I standing underneath. In
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the winter of forty six forty seven, there came a hundred men of high
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Preborian extraction swooping down on to our pond one morning, with many car loads
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of ungainly looking farming tools, sleds, plows, drill barrows, turf knifes,
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spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a double
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pointed pike staff, such as he is not described in the New England Farmer
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or the Cultivator. I did not know whether they had come to sow a
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crop of winter rye or some other kind of grain recently introduced from Iceland.
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As I saw no manure. I judged that they meant to skim the land
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as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow long
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enough. They said that a gentleman farmer who was behind the scenes, wanted
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to double his money, which as I understood, amounted to half a million
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already. But in order to cover each one of his dollars with another,
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he took off the only coat by the skin itself of Walden pond. In
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the midst of a hard winter, they went to work at once plowing,
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barrowing, rolling, furrowing in admirable order, as if they were bent on
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making this a model farm. But when I was looking sharp to see what
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kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my
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side suddenly began to hook up the virgin mold itself with a peculiar jerk clean
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down to the sand, or rather the water, for it was a very
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springy soil, indeed all the terra firmer there was, and haulowed away on
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sleds. And then I guessed that they must be cutting peat in a bog.
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So they came and went every day with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive,
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from and to some point of the holder regions, as it seemed to
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me like a flock of Arctic snow birds. But sometimes squaw Walden had her
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revenge, and a hired man walking behind his team slipped through a crack in
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the ground down to ward Tartarus, and he who was so brave before,
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suddenly became but the ninth part of a man almost gave up his animal heat,
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and was glad to take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that there
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was some virtue in a stove, or sometimes the frozen soil took a piece
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of steel out of a plowshare, or a plow got set in the furrow
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and had to be cut out. To speak literally, a hundred irishmen with
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Yankee overseers came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They divided
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it into cakes by methods too well known to require description, and these,
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being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off off onto an ice platform
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and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle worked by horses onto a stack
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as surely as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by
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side, and row upon row, as if they formed a solid base of
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an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They told me that in a good
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day they could get out a thousand tons, which was the yield of about
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one acre. Deep ruts and cradle holes were worn in the ice as on
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terra firma, by the passage of the sleds over the same track, and
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the horses invariably ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets.
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They stacked up the cakes, thus in the open air in a pile
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thirty five feet high on one side, and six or seven rods square,
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putting hay between the outside layers to exclude them, for when the wind,
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though never so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large cavities,
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leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and finally topple it
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down. At first it looked like a vast blue fort or valhalla. But
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when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the crevices, and this
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became covered with rime and icicles, it looked like a venerable moss grown and
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hoary ruin built of azure tinted marble, the abode of winter that old man
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we see in the Almanac his shanty, as if he had a design to
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estivate with us. They calculated that not twenty five percent of this would reach
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its destination, and that two or three percent would be wasted in the cars.
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However, still greater part of this heap had a different destiny from what
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was intended for either, because the ice was found not to keep so well
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as was expected, containing more air than usual, more for some other reason,
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it never got to market. This heap, made in the winter of
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forty six forty seven and estimated to contain ten thousand tons, was finally covered
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with hay and boards, and though it was unroofed the following July, and
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a part of it carried off, the rest remained exposed to the sun.
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It stood over that summer and the next winter, and was not quite melted
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till September of eighteen forty eight. Thus the pond recovered the greater part like
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the water. The walled and ice seen near at hand has a green tint,
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but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it
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from the white ice of the river or the merely greenish ice of some ponds
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quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of these great cakes slips from the
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ice man sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like
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a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers. I have noticed
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that a portion of walden, which in the state of water was green,
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will often, when frozen, appear from the same point of view blue.
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So the hollows about this pond will sometimes in the winter be filled with the
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greenish water somewhat like its own, but the next day will be frozen blue.
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Perhaps the blue color of water and ice is due to the light and
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air they contain, and the most transparent is the bluest ice. Is an
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interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some some ice houses
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at fresh Pond five years old, which was as good as ever. Why
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is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet
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forever. It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and
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the intellect. Thus, for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred
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men at work, like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses, and apparently
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all the implements of farming, such a picture as we see on the first
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page of the almanac. And as often as I looked out, I was
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reminded of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of
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the sower and the like. And now they are all gone, And in
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thirty days more probably I shall look from the same window on the pure sea,
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green walled, and water reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending
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up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has
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ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives
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and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fissure in his boat, like
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a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in the waves where lately a hundred
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men securely labored. Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New
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Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta drink at my well. In the
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morning. I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the bagot
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Ghita, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison
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with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial. And I
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doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence,
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so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book
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and go to my well for water, and lo, there I meet the
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servant of the Brahmin priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits
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in his temple on the ganjis reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root
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of a tree, with his crust and water. Jug I meet his servant,
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come to draw water for his master, and our buckets, as it
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were, great together in the same way. Well, the pure Walden water
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is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds. It
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is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis, and the Hesperides
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makes the periplus of Hanno, and floating by Ternate and Tidor, and the
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mouth of the Persian Gulf melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas,
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and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names end of Chapter sixteen.