Page 9 (1/2)

Soossip, and worn out all e friends, I rambled still farther ard than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, "to fresh woods and pastures new," or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cowboy or the partridge It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been known there since they grew on her three hills The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in theas Eternal Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country&039;s hills

Occasionally, afterwas done for the day, I joined so on the pond sinceleaf, and, after practising various kinds of philosophy, had concluded coed to the ancient sect of Coenobites There was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, as pleased to look uponerected for the convenience of fishermen; and I was equally pleased when he sat in ether on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not rown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally huh with ether one of unbroken har to remember than if it had been carried on by speech When, as was commonly the case, I had none to co with a paddle on the side ofand dilating sound, stirring theerie his wild beasts, until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hillside

In war the flute, and saw the perch, which I see over the ribbed bottom, which was streith the wrecks of the forest Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, frohts, with a coe, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worht, threw the burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, co, and ere suddenly groping in total darkness Through this, whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of ain But now I had made my home by the shore

Soe parlor till the family had all retired, I have returned to the woods, and, partly with a view to the next day&039;s dinner, spent the hours of ht, serenaded by owls and foxes, and hearing, fro note of some unknown bird close at hand These experiences were very memorable and valuable to me -- anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded so the surface with their tails in theflaxen line withforty feet below, or so sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative of so about its extre purpose there, and slow tohand over hand, so to the upper air It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which caain It seeht next cast my line upward into the air, as well as doard into this eleht two fishes as it ith one hook

The scenery of Walden is on a hurandeur, nor can itfrequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to reen well, half aand a mile and three quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation The surrounding hills rise abruptly froh on the southeast and east they attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a quarter and a third of a mile They are exclusively woodland All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, ht, and follows the sky In clear weather, in suitated, and at a great distance all appear alike In stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark slate-color The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the at covered with snow, both water and ice were alrass Some consider blue "to be the color of pure water, whether liquid or solid" But, looking directly down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different colors Walden is blue at one tireen at another, even fro between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both Viewed from a hilltop it reflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniforhts, viewed even froreen next the shore Some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroad sandbank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and itblue mixed with the yellow of the sand Such is the color of its iris This is that portion, also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat of the sun reflected froh the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal about the still frozen itated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves le, or because there is ht mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such a ti with divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a ht blue, such as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, inal dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but reenish blue, as I reh cloud vistas in the west before sundown Yet a single glass of its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equal quantity of air It is well known that a large plate of glass will have a green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its "body," but a se a body of Walden water would be required to reflect a green tint I have never proved The water of our river is black or a very dark brown to one looking directly down on it, and, like that ofin it a yellowish tinge; but this water is of such crystalline purity that the body of the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still nified and distorted withal, produces a elo

The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet Paddling over it, you may see, many feet beneath the surface, the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch long, yet the foruished by their transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there Once, in the winter, h the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed enius had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the holes, where the water enty-five feet deep Out of curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked through the hole, until I saw the axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond; and there ittill in the course of ti another hole directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neighborhood with my knife, Iit down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the axe out again

The shore is co-stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in le leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side Some think it is bottomless It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the littleto it, a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellohite, but only a few set or two; all which however a bather ht like the elerow in The stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the leaves which have been wafted on to it so ht up on anchors even in midwinter

We have one other pond just like this, White Pond, in Nine Acre Corner, about two and a half h I am acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of this centre I do not know a third of this pure and well-like character Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fathoreen and pellucid as ever Not an inter when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with eese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed them Even then it had commenced to rise and fall, and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they noear, and obtained a patent of Heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews Who knows in how many unremembered nations&039; literatures this has been the Castalian Fountain? or what nyem of the first water which Concord wears in her coronet

Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace of their footsteps I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding froe, as old probably as the race of inal hunters, and still froly trodden by the present occupants of the land This is particularly distinct to one standing on the ht snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a uishable close at hand The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo The ornarounds of villas which will one day be built here may still preserve some trace of this

The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, her in the winter and lower in the sueneral wet and dryness I can remember when it was a foot or ter, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it There is a narrow sand-bar running into it, with very deep water on one side, on which I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years; and, on the other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when I told them, that a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods fro since converted into a meadow But the pond has risen steadily for two years, and now, in the suher than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow s This saain It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it Flint&039;s Pond, afor the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, syreatest height at the same time with the latter The saoes, of White Pond

This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use at least; the water standing at this great height for a year or h it makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its edge since the last rise -- pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, and others -- and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many ponds and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is lowest On the side of the pond next h, has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates how ht By this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession These are the lips of the lake, on which no beard grows It licks its chaps froht, the alders, s, and maples send forth afroht of three or four feet froround, in the effort to h blueberry bushes about the shore, which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these circumstances

Soularly paved My townsmen have all heard the tradition -- the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth -- that anciently the Indians were holding a po upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used h this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore It is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one; and this Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who re-rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily doard, and he concluded to dig a well here As for the stones, many still think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves on these hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills are remarkably full of the saed to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is er a mystery to me I detect the paver If the nalish locality -- Saffron Walden, for instance -- one inally Walled-in Pond

The pond wasFor four months in the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all tiood as any, if not the best, in the town In the winter, all water which is exposed to the air is colder than springs and wells which are protected from it The temperature of the pond water which had stood in the room where I sat from five o&039;clock in the afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth of March, 1846, the ther partly to the sun on the roof, was 42x, or one degree colder than the water of one of the coldest wells in the village just drawn The te the sah it is the coldest that I know of in sunant surface water is not led with it Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth In the warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in ht, and re in the neighborhood It was as good when a week old as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of the pump Whoever camps for a week in summer by the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet deep in the shade of his camp to be independent of the luxury of ice

There have been caught in Walden pickerel, one weighing seven pounds -- to say nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherht pounds because he did not see hi over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach (Leuciscus pulchellus), a very few brea four pounds -- I aht of a fish is commonly its only title to fame, and these are the only eels I have heard of here; -- also, I have a faint recollection of a little fish soreenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character, which I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable Nevertheless, this pond is not very fertile in fish Its pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast I have seen at one ti on the ice pickerel of at least three different kinds: a long and shallow one, steel-colored, olden kind, with greenish reflections and reolden-colored, and shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones, very much like a trout The specific nauttatus rather These are all very firh more than their size promises The shiners, pouts, and perch also, and indeed all the fishes which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and firmer-fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds, as the water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished froists would make new varieties of sos and tortoises, and a few mussels in it; muskrats and minks leave their traces about it, and occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it So, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted hieese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied ss (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanusits stony shores all su on a white pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wind of a gull, like Fair Haven At most, it tolerates one annual loon These are all the animals of consequence which frequent it now

You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some circular heaps half a dozen feet in dia of s in size, where all around is bare sand At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them on the ice for any purpose, and so, when the ice ular and some of them plainly too fresh for that They are similar to those found in rivers; but as there are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know not by what fish they could be made Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottoh not to be monotonous I have in my mind&039;s eye the western, indented with deep bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scalloped southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves between The forest has never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a se; for the water in which it is reflected not only round in such a case, but, with its winding shore, the reeable boundary to it There is no rawness nor ie there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated field abuts on it The trees have ample room to expand on the water side, and each sends forth its orous branch in that direction There Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations frohest trees There are few traces of man&039;s hand to be seen The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago

A lake is the landscape&039;s most beautiful and expressive feature It is earth&039;s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows

Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calht haze makes the opposite shore-line indistinct, I have seen whence calassy surface of a lake" When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossaainst the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another You would think that you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the shich skiht perch on it Indeed, they sometimes dive below this line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived As you look over the pond ard you are obliged to eainst the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are equally bright; and if, between the two, you survey its surface critically, it is literally as slass, except where the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its whole extent, by their inable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have said, a s skims so low as to touch it It may be that in the distance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it ees, and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so diealed, and the few lass You may often detect a yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb, boo on it From a hilltop you can see a fish leap in almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake It is wonderful hat elaborateness this simple fact is advertised -- this piscine uish the circling undulations when they are half a dozen rods in dia (Gyrinus) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of aa conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it perceptibly When the surface is considerably agitated there are no skaters nor water-bugs on it, but apparently, in callide forth from the shore by short i employment, on one of those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stu the pond, and study the di circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface areat expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently sed, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the treain Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling di up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable How peaceful the phenoain the works ofand stone and cobweb sparkles now atEvery ht; and if an oar falls, hoeet the echo!

In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious toso fair, so pure, and at the sae, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth Sky water It needs no fence Nations co it It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh; -- a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun&039;s hazy brush -- this the light dust-cloth -- which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air It is continually receiving new life and motion from above It is interrass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it

The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the latter part of October, when the severe frosts have come; and then and in Nove to ripple the surface One November afternoon, in the calm at the end of a rain-storm of several days&039; duration, when the sky was still completely overcast and the air was full of mist, I observed that the pond was reuish its surface; though it no longer reflected the bright tints of October, but the soh I passed over it as gently as possible, the slight undulations produced by ave a ribbed appearance to the reflections But, as I was looking over the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faint glimmer, as if soht be collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so s welled up froently to one of these places, I was surprised to find myself surrounded by , of a rich bronze color in the green water, sporting there, and constantly rising to the surface and di bubbles on it In such transparent and see the clouds, I seeh the air as in a balloon, and their swi, as if they were a coht or left, their fins, like sails, set all around them There werethe short season before winter would draw an icy shutter over their broad skylight, soht breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there When I approached carelessly and alar with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths At length the wind rose, the an to run, and the perch leaped her than before, half out of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface Even as late as the fifth of December, one year, I saw so to rain hard i fun of mist, I made haste to take my place at the oars and row hoh I felt none onBut suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had seared into the depths, and I saw their schools di; so I spent a dry afternoon after all

An old o, when it was dark with surrounding forests, tells me that in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and other water-fowl, and that there were , and used an old log canoe which he found on the shore It was ether, and was cut off square at the ends It was very clued and perhaps sank to the bottoed to the pond He used to ether An old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest at the botto up to the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back into deep water and disappear I was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of the saraceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake I remember that when I first looked into these depths there wereon the bottom, which had either been blown over for, as cheaper; but now they have mostly disappeared

When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in sorape-vines had run over the trees next the water and formed bowers under which a boat could pass The hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on theh, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some land of sylvan spectacle I have spentover its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddledonawake, until I was aroused by the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to; days when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and suret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher&039;s desk But since I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for h the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?