Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Chapter 9

Episode Transcript

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The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
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Why get all your.

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Speaker 2 (01:00):
Servises in terms.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
Apply Walden by Henry David Thorough, chapter nine. The ponds,
sometimes having a surfeit of human society and gossip, and
worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther

(01:21):
westward 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

(01:44):
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

(02:06):
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,

(02:28):
which is rubbed off in the market cart, or they
become mere provender. As long as eternal justice reigns, not
one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country's hills. Occasionally,
after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined

(02:51):
some impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond
since morning, as silent and motionless as a duck or
a floating leaf, and after practicing various kinds of philosophy,
had concluded commonly by the time I arrived, that he
belonged to the ancient sect of cenobites. There was one

(03:14):
older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all kinds
of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house
as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen. And
I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway
to arrange his lines. He at one end of the
boat and I at the other. But not many words

(03:36):
passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his
later years. But he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized
well enough with my philosophy. Our intercourse was thus altogether
one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to remember than
if it had been carried on by speech. When, as

(04:00):
was commonly the case, I had none to commune with,
I used to raise the echoes by striking with a
paddle on the side of my boat, filling the surrounding
woods with circling and dilating sounds, stirring them up as
the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until I

(04:20):
elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hillside. In
warm evenings, I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute,
and saw the perch, which I seemed to have charmed,
hovering around me, and the moon traveling over the ribbed bottom,

(04:41):
which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly,
I had come to this pond adventurously from time to time,
in dark summer nights, with a companion, and making a
fire close to the water's edge, which we thought attracted
the fishes we caught with a bunch of worms strung

(05:02):
on a thread. And when we had done far in
the night through the burning brands high into the air
like sky rockets, which coming down into the pond, were
quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping
in total darkness. Through this whistling a tune, we took

(05:23):
our way to the haunts of men again. But now
I had made my home by the shore. Sometimes after
staying in a village parlor till the family had all retired,
I have returned to the woods, and, partly with a
view to the next day's dinner, spent the hours of

(05:43):
midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls
and foxes, and hearing from time to time the creaking
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,

(06:07):
surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling
the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating
by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which
had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty

(06:28):
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 some life prowling about its
extremity of dull, uncertain blundering purpose there and slow to

(06:48):
make up its mind. At length, you slowly raise, pulling
hand over hand, some horned pout, squeaking and squirming to
the upper air. It was very queer, especially in dark nights,
when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes

(07:12):
in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk which came
to interrupt your dreams and link you to nature again.
It seemed as if I might next cast my line
upward into the air as well as downward into this element,
which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes,

(07:39):
as it were, with one hook. The scenery of Walden
is on a humble scale, and though very beautiful, does
not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one
who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore.
Yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and

(08:02):
purity as to merit a particular description. It is a
clear and deep green well half a mile long and
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

(08:26):
inlet or outlet, except by the clouds and evaporation. The
surrounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height
of forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and
east they attain to about one hundred and one hundred
and fifty feet respectively. Within a quarter and a third

(08:49):
of a mile they are exclusively woodland. All our Concord
waters have two colors, at least one when viewed at
a distance, and another more proper close at hand. The
first depends more on the light and follows the sky

(09:09):
in clear weather. In summer, they appear blue at a
little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance
all appear alike. In stormy weather, they are sometimes a
dark slate color. The sea, however, is said to be
blue one day in green another, without any perceptible change

(09:31):
in the atmosphere. I have seen our river when the landscape,
being covered with snow, both water and ice were almost
as green as grass. Some consider blue to be the
color of pure water, whether liquid or solid, But looking

(09:52):
directly down into our waters from a boat, they are
seen to be of very different colors. Walden is blue
at one time and green at another. Even from the
same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens,
it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hilltop,

(10:17):
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 uniform dark green in the
body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from

(10:38):
a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next to
the shore. Some have referred this to the reflection of
the verdure, but it is equally green there against the
railroad's sand bank, and in the spring before the leaves
are expanded, and it may be simply the result of
the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand,

(11:03):
such as the color.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
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share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
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to find out who wants cranberry sauce or who should
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sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(11:26):
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Speaker 4 (12:06):
Its iris, this is that portion also where in the spring,
the ice being warmed by the heat of the sun
reflected from the bottom and also transmitted through the earth,
melts first and forms a narrow canal about the still
frozen middle, like the rest of our waters. When much

(12:28):
agitated in clear weather so that the surface of the
waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or
because there is more light mixed with it, it appears
at a little distance of a darker blue than the
sky itself, and at such a time, being on its
surface and looking with divided vision so as to see

(12:49):
the reflection, I have discerned a matchless and indescribable light
blue such as watered or chainingible silks and sword blades,
suggest more cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the

(13:10):
original dark green on the opposite sides of the waves
which last appeared, but muddy in comparison. It is a
vitreous greenish blue, as I remember it, like those patches
of the winter sky seen through cloud vistas in the
west before sundown. Yet a single glass of its water

(13:33):
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 small
piece of the same will be colorless. How large a

(13:54):
body of walled and 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 of
most ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in
it a yellowish tinge. But this water is of such

(14:18):
crystalline purity that the body of the bather appears of
an alabaster whiteness, still more unnatural, which, as the limbs
are magnified and distorted withal produces a monstrous effect, making
fit studies for a Michael Angelo. The water is so

(14:42):
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 former easily distinguished by their transverse bars, and you

(15:05):
think that they must be ascetic fish that find a
subsistence there. Once in the winter, many years ago, when
I had been cutting holes through the ice in order
to catch pickerel. As I stepped ashore, I tossed my
axe back on to the ice, but as if some
evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five

(15:28):
rods directly into one of the holes, where the water
was twenty five feet deep. Out of curiosity, I laid
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

(15:51):
there it might have stood erect and swaying till in
the course of time the handle rotted off, if I
had not disturbed it, making 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, I made a slip noose which I
attached to its end, and, letting it down, carefully passed

(16:15):
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 composed of a belt
of smooth, rounded white stones like paving stones, except one
or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that
in many places a single leap will carry you into

(16:37):
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

(17:00):
the little meadows recently overflowed, which do not properly belong
to it. A closer scrutiny does not detect a flag,
nor a bulrush, nor even a lily yellow or white,
but only a few small heart leaves and potamogetons, and
perhaps a water target or two, all which, however, a

(17:22):
bay there might not perceive. And these plants are clean
and bright, like the element they grow in the stones.
Extend a rod or two into the water, and then
the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest part,
where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the
decay of the leaves which have been wafted on to it.

(17:45):
So many successive falls, and a bright green weed is
brought 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 miles westerly. But though I
am acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen

(18:07):
miles of this center, I do not know a third
of this pure and well like character. Successive nations, perchance
have drank at, admired and fathomed it, and passed away.
And still its water is green and pellucid, as ever

(18:28):
not an intermitting spring. Perhaps on that spring morning 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 myriads of ducks and geese, which had

(18:52):
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 now wear, and obtained a patent of Heaven
to be the only wollden pond in the world, and

(19:13):
distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how many unremembered
nations literatures this has been the Castalian fountain, or what
nymphs presided over it in the Golden age. It is

(19:34):
a gem 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,

(19:58):
a narrow shelf like pas in the steep hillside, alternately
rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water's edge,
as old, probably as the race of man, here worn
by the feet of Aboriginal hunters, and still from time
to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land.

(20:23):
This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle
of the pond in winter, just after a light snow
has fallen, appearing as a clear, undulating white line, unobscured
by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of
a mile off in many places, where in summer it

(20:44):
is hardly distinguishable. Close at hand, the snow reprints it
as it were, in clear white type alto relievo. The
ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built
here may still preserve some trace of this. The pond

(21:08):
rises and falls, but whether regularly or not and within
what period nobody knows, though as usual many pretend to know.
It is commonly higher in winter and lower in the summer,
though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I

(21:29):
can remember when it was a foot or two lower,
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

(21:50):
year eighteen twenty four, 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 from the only shore they knew.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with instacrt's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(22:34):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes, plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees
and terms apply.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday hall.

(23:06):
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Service fees in terms apply.

Speaker 4 (23:14):
Which place was long since converted into a meadow? But
the pond has risen steadily for two years, and now,
in the summer of fifty two, is just five feet
higher 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

(23:40):
the outside of six or seven feet, and yet the
water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount,
and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect
the deep springs. This same summer, the pond has begun
to fall again. It is remark arkable that this fluctuation,

(24:02):
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's Pond a
mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets

(24:26):
and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also sympathize with
Walden and recently attained their greatest height at the same
time with the latter. The same is true as far
as my observation goes of White Pond. This rise and

(24:47):
fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use. At
least the water standing at this great height for a
year or more. Though it makes it difficult to walk round.
It kills the shrubs and t trees which have sprung
up about its edge since the last rise. Pitch pines, birches, alders,

(25:07):
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
my house, a row of pitch pines fifteen feet high

(25:31):
has been killed and tipped over, as if by a lever,
and thus a stop put to their encroachments, and their
size indicates how many years have elapsed since the last
rise to this height. By this fluctuation, the pond asserts
its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn,

(25:53):
and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession.
These are the lips of the lake on which which
no beard grows. It licks its chaps. From time to time,
when the weather is at its height, the alders, willows,
and maples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots

(26:14):
several feet long, from all sides of their stems in
the water and to the height of three or four
feet from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves.
And I have known the high blueberry bushes about the shore,
which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop Under
these circumstances, some have been puzzled to tell how the

(26:39):
shore became so regularly 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 pow wow upon a hill here which rose as
high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep

(27:01):
into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the
story goes, though 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.

(27:25):
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 the ancient settler whom I have mentioned,

(27:48):
who remembers so well when he first came here with
his divining rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward,
and the hazel pointed steadily downward. And he concluded to
dig a well here. As for the stones, many still
think that they are hardly to be accounted for by

(28:09):
the action of the waves on these hills. But I
observe that the surrounding hills are remarkably full of the
same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged
to pile them up in walls on both sides of
the railroad cut nearest the pond. And moreover there are
more stones where the shore is most abrupt, so that,

(28:34):
unfortunately it is no longer a mystery to me I
detect the paver. If the name was not derived from
that of some English locality, saffron Walden, for instance, one
might suppose that it was called originally walled in pond.

(28:59):
The pond was my well, ready dug for four months
in the year. Its water is as cold as it
is pure at all times, and I think that it
is then as good 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

(29:20):
which are protected from it. The temperature of the pond
water which had stood in the room where I sat
from five o'clock in the afternoon till noon the next day,
the sixth of March eighteen forty six, the thermometer having
been up to sixty five or seventy degrees some of
the time, owing partly to the sun on the roof,

(29:43):
was forty two degrees, or one degree colder than the
water of one of the coldest wells in the village.
Just drawn. The temperature of the boiling spring the same
day was forty five degrees, or the warmest of any
water tripe, though it is the coldest that I know

(30:03):
of in summer, when beside shallow and stagnant surface water
is not mingled 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 my cellar, where it

(30:26):
became cool in the night and remained so during the day,
though I also resorted to a spring 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

(30:48):
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 way seven pounds, to
say nothing of another which carried off a reel with
great velocity, which the fishermen safely set down at eight

(31:08):
pounds because he did not see him. Perch and pouts,
some of each weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach,
a very few breams, and a couple of eels, one
weighing four pounds. I am thus particular because the weight
of a fish is commonly its only title to fame,

(31:31):
and these are the only eels I have heard of here. Also,
I have a faint recollection of a little fish, some
five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back,
somewhat dace like in its character, which I mention here
chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, this pond

(31:55):
is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not
above are its chief boast. I have seen at one
time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three
different kinds, a long and shallow one steel colored, most
like those caught in the river, a bright golden kind

(32:18):
with greenish reflections and remarkably deep, which is the most
common here, And another golden 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 name reticulatus would

(32:42):
not apply to this, It should be guttatus. Rather. These
are all very firm fish, and way more than their
size promises. The shiners, pouts and perch also, and indeed
all the fishes which inhabit this pond are much cleaner, handsomer,

(33:07):
and firmer fleshed than those in the river and most
other ponds, as the water is purer, and they can
easily be distinguished from them. Probably many ichthyologists would make
new varieties of some of them. There are also a
certain race of frogs and tortoises, and a few mussels

(33:31):
in it. Muskrats and mink leave their traces about it,
and occasionally a traveling mud turtle visits it. Sometimes, when
I pushed off my boat in the morning, I disturbed
a great mud turtle which had secreted himself under the
boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in

(33:53):
the spring and fall. The white bellied swallows Hirundo by
color skim over it, and the peat wheats Totanus macularius
teeter along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes
disturbed a fish hawk sitting on a white pine over

(34:17):
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,

(34:39):
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 diameter by a foot
in height, consisting of small stones less than a hen's
egg in size, where all around is bare sand. At
For do you wonder if the Indians could have formed

(35:01):
them on the ice for any purpose? And so when
the ice melted they sank to the bottom. But they
are too regular, 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

(35:26):
they are the nests of the chiven. These lend a
pleasing mystery to the bottom. The shore is irregular enough
not to be monotonous. I have in my mind's eye
the western indented with deep bays, the bolder northern, and
the beautifully scalloped southern shore, where successive capes overlap each

(35:51):
other and suggest unexplored coves between. The forest was never
so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as
when seen from the middle of a small lake amid
hills which rise from the water's edge. For the water
in which it is reflected not only makes the best

(36:13):
foreground in such a case, but with its winding shore
the most natural and agreeable boundary to it. There is
no rawness nor imperfection in its edge there as where
the axe has cleared apart or a cultivated field of
butts on it. The trees have ample room to expand

(36:37):
on the water side, and each sends forth its most
vigorous branch in that direction. There nature has woven a
natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from
the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees
there are few traces of man's hand to be seen.

(37:01):
The water laves the shore as it did a thousand
years ago. A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and
expressive feature. It is Earth's eye, looking into which the
beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile

(37:26):
trees next the shore are the slender eye lashes which
fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around it
are its overhanging brows. Standing on the smooth sandy beach
at the east end of the pond in a calm
September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore

(37:50):
line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression the
glassy surface of a lake. When you invert your head,
it looks like a thread of finest gossamers stretched across
the valley and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating

(38:13):
one stratum of the atmosphere from another. You would think
that you could walk dry under it to the opposing hills,
and that the swallows which skim over might perch on it.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
Gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the yams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(38:49):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes. Plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees
and terms apply.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Why get all.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
Your holidays decorations delivered through instacart Because maybe you only
bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows, Or maybe
your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar, or
maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
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this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday hall.

(39:20):
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Speaker 2 (39:26):
Service fees in terms supply.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
Indeed, they sometimes dive below this line, as if it
were by mistake, and are undeceived. As you look over
the pond westward, you are obliged to employ both your
hands to defend your eyes against the reflected as well
as the true sun, for they are equally bright. And

(39:52):
if between the two you survey its surface critically, it
is literally as smooth as glass, except where the skater insects,
at equal intervals, scatter over its whole extent by their
motions in the sun, produce the finest imaginable sparkle on it,

(40:14):
or perchance a duck plumes itself, or as I have said,
a swallow 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 emerges, and another

(40:38):
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 dimple it. Again. It is like bolten glass,

(41:01):
cooled but not congealed, and the few moats in it
are pure and beautiful, like the imperfections and glass. You
may often detect a yet smoother and darker water, separated
from the rest, as if by an invisible cobweb boom

(41:26):
of the water nymphs resting 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 with what elaborateness this

(41:51):
simple fact is advertised, This pisene murder will out, and
from my distant perch I distinguish the circling undulations when
they are half a dozen rods in diameter. You can
even detect a water bug gyrinus ceaselessly progressing over the

(42:15):
smooth surface a quarter of a mile off. For they
furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by
two diverging lines. But the skaters glide over it without
rippling it perceptibly. When the surface is considerably agitated, there

(42:37):
are no skaters nor water bugs on it, But apparently
in calm days they leave their havens and adventurously glide
forth from the shore by short impulses till they completely
cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one of
those fine days in the fall, when all the warmth

(43:00):
of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a
stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond,
and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on
its otherwise invisible surface, amid the reflected skies and trees.

(43:21):
Over this great expanse. There is no disturbance, but it
is thus at once gently smoothed away and assaged, as
when a vase of water is jarred. The trembling circles
seek the shore, and all is smooth again. Not a
fish can leap, or an insect fall on the pond,

(43:44):
but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines
of beauty, as it were, the constant welling up of
its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving
of its rest. The thrills of joy and thrills of
pain are indistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake. Again,

(44:14):
the works of man shine as in the spring ay,
Every leaf and twig in stone and cobweb sparkles now
at mid afternoon, as when covered with dew in a
spring morning. Every motion of an ore or an insect

(44:34):
produces a flash of light, And if an oar falls,
how sweet the echo In such a day in September
or October. Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round
with stones, as precious to my eye as if fewer

(44:58):
or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the
same time so large as a lake perchants. Lies on
the surface of the earth sky water. It needs no fence.
Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a

(45:23):
mirror which no stone can crack, whose quick silver will
never wear off, whose gilding nature continually repairs, no storms,
no dust can dim its surface, ever fresh, a mirror

(45:47):
in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and
dusted by the sun's hazy brush. This the light dust cloth,
which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but

(46:09):
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.

(46:30):
It is intermediate in its nature, between land and sky.
On land, only the grass 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

(46:55):
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

(47:17):
the severe frosts have come. And then and in November,
usually in a calm day, there is absolutely nothing to
ripple the surface. One November afternoon, in the calm, at
the end of a rain storm of several days duration,

(47:40):
when the sky was still completely overcast and the air
was full of mist, I observed that the pond was
remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to distinguish its surface,
though it no longer reflected the bright tints of October,
but the somber November colors of the surrounding hills. Though

(48:07):
I passed over it as gently as possible, the slight
undulations produced by my boat extended almost as far as
I could see, and gave a ribed appearance to the reflections.
But as I was looking over the surface, I saw

(48:28):
here and there, at a distance a faint glimmer, as
if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts might
be collected there, or perchance the surface, being so smoothed, betrayed.
Where a spring welled up from the bottom. Paddling gently

(48:51):
to one of these places, I was surprised to find
myself surrounded by myriads of small perch about five inches long,
of a rich bronze color in the green water, sporting
there and constantly rising to the surface and dimpling it,

(49:12):
sometimes leaving bubbles on it. In such transparent and seemingly
bottomless water reflecting the clouds, I seem to be floating
through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming
impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart, because
maybe you only bought two wreaths, but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
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or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday hall.

(49:55):
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instacart and enjoy free deliver on your first three orders.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Service fees in terms apply.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
gramma secret, pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(50:25):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes. Plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees
and terms apply.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
As if they were a compact flock of birds passing
just beneath my level on the right or left their
fins like sales set all around them. There were many
such schools in the pond apparently improving the short season

(50:56):
before winter, would draw an icy shutter for their broad skylight,
sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if a
slight breeze struck it, or a few rain drops fell there.
When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a
sudden splash and rippling with their tails, as if one

(51:19):
had struck the water with a bushy bough, and instantly
took refuge in the depths. At length, the wind rose,
the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and
the perch leaped much higher than before, half out of water,

(51:40):
a hundred black points three inches long at once above
the surface. Even as late as the fifth of December
one year, I saw some dimples on the surface, and,
thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the air
being full of mist, I made haste to take my

(52:01):
place at the oars and row homeward. Already the rain
seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none on my cheek,
and I anticipated a thorough soaking. But suddenly the dimples ceased,
for they were produced by the perch, which the noise
of my oars had seared into the depths, and I

(52:24):
saw their schools dimly disappearing, so I spent a dry
afternoon after all. An old man who used to frequent
this pond nearly sixty years ago, 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,

(52:47):
and that there were many eagles about it. He came
here a fishing and used an old log canoe which
he found on the shore. It was made of two
white pine logs dug out and pinned together, and was
cut off square at the ends. It was very clumsy,

(53:08):
but lasted a great many years before it became water
logged and perhaps sank to the bottom. He did not
know whose it was. It belonged to the pond. He
used to make a cable for his anchor of strips
of hickory bark tied together. An old man, a potter

(53:29):
who lived by the pond before the revolution, told him
once that there was an iron chest at the bottom,
and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come
floating up to the shore, but when he went toward it,
it would go back into the deep water and disappear.
I was pleased to hear of the old log canoe

(53:53):
which took the place of an Indian one of the
same material but more graceful construction, which purchased ants 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

(54:13):
remember that when I first looked into these depths there
were many large trunks to be seen in distinctly lying
on the bottom, which had either been blown over formerly
or left on the ice at the last cutting when
wood was cheaper. But now they have mostly disappeared. When

(54:35):
I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely
surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and
in some of its coves grape vines had run over
the trees next the water and formed bowers under which
a boat could pass. The hills which form its shores

(54:57):
are so steep, and the woods on them then so high,
that as you look down from the west end, it
had the appearance of an amphitheater. For some land of
Silvan spectacle. I have spent many an hour when I
was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed.

(55:19):
Having paddled my boat to the middle and lying on
my back across the seats in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake,
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

(55:42):
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 summer days, and spent them lavishly. Nor do

(56:08):
I regret that I did not waste more of them
in the workshop or the teacher's desk. But since I
left those shores, the wood choppers have still further laid
them waste. And now for many a year there will
be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood,
with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My

(56:33):
muse may be excused if she is silent. Henceforth, how
can you expect the birds to sing when their groves
are cut down? Now the trunks of trees on the bottom,
and the old log canoe and the dark surrounding woods

(56:54):
are gone, and the villagers who scarcely know where it lies,
instead of going to the pond to bathe or drink,
are thinking to bring its water, which should be as
sacred as the Ganges, at least to the village in
a pipe to wash their dishes with, to earn their

(57:17):
Walden by the turning of a cock or the drawing
of a plug. That devilish iron horse, whose ear rending
neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the boiling
spring with his foot. And here it is that has
browsed off all the woods on Walden Shore. That trojan

(57:41):
horse with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by
mercenary Greeks. Where is the country's champion, the moore of
mooor Hill to meet him at the deep cut and
thrust an avengering lance between the ribs of the bloated pest. Nevertheless,

(58:08):
of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears
best and best preserves its purity. Many men have been
likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the
wood choppers have laid bare first this shore, and then
that when the Irish have built their sties by it,

(58:32):
and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the
ice men have skimmed it once it is itself unchanged,
the same water which my youthful eyes fell on. All
the change is in me. It has not acquired one

(58:55):
permanent wrinkle after all its ripples. It is perennially young.
And I may stand and see a swallow dip, apparently
to pick an insect from its surface, as of yore.
It struck me again to night, as if I had

(59:18):
not seen it almost daily for more than twenty years.
Why here is Walden, the same woodland lake that I
discovered so many years ago, where a forest was cut
down last winter? Another is springing up by its shore

(59:38):
as lustily as ever. The same thought is welling up
to its surface that was then. It is the same
liquid joy and happiness to itself and its maker. Aye,
And it may be to me it is the work

(01:00:01):
of a brave man, surely in whom there was no guile.
He rounded this water with his hand, deepened and clarified
it in his thought, and in his will bequeathed it
to Concord. I see by its face that it is

(01:00:26):
visited by the same reflection, and I can almost say, Walden,
is it you? It is no dream of mine?

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart. Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, instacarts here for hosts and their whole holiday hall.

(01:01:03):
Get decorations from the home depots, cvs and more through instacart,
and enjoy free delivery on your.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
First three orders, service fees and terms supply.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
Gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the ams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(01:01:33):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes plus
enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees
and terms apply.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
To ornament a line. I cannot come nearer to God
and Heaven, then I live to Walden even I am.
It's stony shore and the breeze that passes, or the
hollow of my hand, are its water and its sand,

(01:02:06):
and its deepest resort lies high in my thought. The
cars never pause to look at it. Yet I fancy
that the engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers
who have a season ticket and see it often are
better men for the sight. The engineer does not forget

(01:02:30):
at night, or his nature does not that he has
held this vision of serenity and purity once at least
during the day. Though seen, but once it helps to
wash out State Street and the engine's soot. One proposes

(01:02:54):
that it be called God's drop. I have said that
Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet. But it is
on the one hand, distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond,
which is more elevated by a chain of small ponds

(01:03:14):
coming from that quarter, and on the other directly and
manifestly to Concord River, which is lower by a similar
chain of ponds through which in some other geological period
it may have flowed, And by a little digging, which
God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again.

(01:03:38):
If by living thus reserved an austere like a hermit
in the woods, so long it has acquired such wonderful purity,
who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of
Flint's Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should

(01:03:58):
ever go to waste its weakness in the ocean's wave.
Flints or Sandy Pond in Lincoln, our greatest lake and
inland Sea, lies about a mile east of Walden. It
is much larger, being said to contain one hundred and
ninety seven acres, and is more fertile in fish, but

(01:04:21):
it is comparatively shallow and not remarkably pure. A walk
through the woods thither was often my recreation. It was
worth the while, if only to feel the wind blow
on your cheeks freely, and see the waves run, and
remember the life of mariners. I went a chestnutting there

(01:04:44):
in the fall on windy days when the nuts were
dropping into the water and were washed to my feet.
And one day, as I crept along its sedgy shore,
the fresh spray blowing in my face. I came upon
the moldering wreck of a boat, the sides gone and
hardly more than the impression of its flat bottom left

(01:05:07):
amid the rushes. Yet its model was sharply defined, as
if it were a large decayed pad with its veines.
It was as impressive a wreck as one could imagine
on the sea shore, and had as good a moral.
It is by this time mere vegetable, mold and undistinguishable

(01:05:29):
pond shore, through which rushes and flags have pushed up.
I used to admire the ripple marks on the sandy
bottom at the north end of this pond, made firm
and hard to the feet of the waiter by the
pressure of the water, and the rushes which grew in
indian file. In waving lines corresponding to these marks rank

(01:05:54):
behind rank, as if the waves had planted them. There Also,
I have found in considerable quantities curious balls, composed apparently
of fine grass or roots of pipewort, perhaps from half
an inch to four inches in diameter, and perfectly spherical.

(01:06:17):
They wash back and forth in shallow water on a
sandy bottom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. They
are either solid grass or have a little sand in
the middle. At first, you would say that they were
formed by the action of the waves, like a pebble.
Yet the smallest are made of equally coarse materials half

(01:06:41):
an inch long, and they are produced only at one
season of the year. Moreover, the waves I suspect, do
not so much construct as wear down a material which
has already acquired consistency. They preserve their form when dry
for an indefinite period. Flints pawned. Such is the poverty

(01:07:06):
of our nomenclature. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer,
whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he
has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it,
some skin flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of

(01:07:26):
a dollar, or a bright scent in which he could
see his own brazen face, who regarded even the wild
ducks which settled in it as trespassers, his fingers grown
into crooked and bony talons from the long habit of
grasping harpy like. So it is not named for me.

(01:07:51):
I go not there to see him, nor to hear
of him, who never saw it, who never bathed in it,
who never loved it, who never protected it, who never
spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that
he had made it. Rather, let it be named from

(01:08:14):
the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or
quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by
its shore, or some wild man or child, the thread
of whose history is interwoven with its own. Not for
him who could show no title to it, but the

(01:08:34):
deed which a like minded neighbor or legislature gave him,
Him who thought only of its money value, whose presence
perchance cursed all the shores, who exhausted the land around it,
and would fain have exhausted the waters within it, who

(01:08:56):
regretted only that it was not English hay or cranberry meadow.
There was nothing to redeem it forsooth in his eyes,
and would have drained and sold it for the mud
at its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and
it was no privilege to him to behold it. I

(01:09:19):
respect not his labors, his farm. Where everything has its price.
Who would carry the landscape, Who would carry his God
to market if he could get anything for him? Who
goes to market for his God as it is on

(01:09:39):
whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops,
whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars.
Who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits
are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars,

(01:10:05):
Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. Farmers are
respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are
poor poor farmers. A model farm where the house stands

(01:10:25):
like a fungus in a muck heap, chambers for men, horses, oxen,
and swine, cleansed and uncleansed, all contiguous to one another,
stock'd with men, a great grease spot, redolent of manures
and buttermilk under a high state of cultivation, being manured

(01:10:49):
with the hearts and brains of men, as if you
were to raise your potatoes in the church yard. Such
is a model farm. No. No, if the fairest features
of the landscape are to be named after men, let

(01:11:11):
them be the noblest and worthiest men alone. Let our
lakes receive as true names, at least as the Icarian sea,
where still the shore a brave attempt resounds. Goose pond

(01:11:31):
of small extent is on my way to Flint's fair Haven.
An expense of Concord River, said to contain some seventy acres,
is a mile southwest, and White Pond of about forty
acres is a mile and a half beyond fair Haven.

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through instacart Because
maybe you only bought two wreaths but you have twelve windows,
Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the advent calendar,
or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm,
or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason,
this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul.

(01:12:10):
Get decorations from the home depots, cvs and more through
instacart and enjoy free delivery on your.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
First three orders, service fees and terms supply.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
The holidays are all about sharing with family, meals, couches, stories,
Gramma secret pecan pie recipe, and now you can also
share a cart with Instacart's family carts. Everyone can add
what they want to one group cart from wherever they are,
so you don't have to go from room to room
to find out who wants cranberry sauce, or who should
get many marshmallows for the y ams, or collecting votes for
sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then

(01:12:40):
share the meals and the moments. Download the instacart app
and get delivery in as fast as thirty minutes plus.
Enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees
and terms apply.

Speaker 4 (01:12:50):
This is my lake country. These with Concord River are
my water privileges, and night and day, year in year out,
they grind such grist as I carry to them. Since
the woodcutters and the railroad I myself have profaned Walden

(01:13:12):
perhaps the most attractive, if not the most beautiful, of
all our lakes. The gem of the woods is White Pond,
poor name for its commonness weather derived from the remarkable
purity of its waters or the color of its sands.
In these as in other respects, however, it is a

(01:13:34):
lesser twin of Walden. They are so much alike that
you would say they must be connected. Underground. It has
the same stony shore, and its waters are of the
same hue as at Walden. In sultry dog day weather,
looking down through the woods on some of its bays,

(01:13:54):
which are not so deep, but that the reflection from
the bottom tinges them. Its waters are of a misty,
bluish green or glaucous color. Many years since I used
to go there to collect the sand by cart loads
to make sand paper with, and I have continued to

(01:14:15):
visit it ever since. One who frequents it proposes to
call it virid lake. Perhaps it might be called yellow
pine Lake. From the following circumstance. About fifteen years ago,
you could see the top of a pitch pine of

(01:14:35):
the kind called yellow pine hereabouts, though it is not
a distinct species, projecting above the surface in deep water
many rods from the shore. It was even supposed by
some that the pond had sunk, and this was one
of the primitive forest that formerly stood there. I find

(01:14:57):
that even so long ago. A seventeen ninety two, in
a topographical description of the town of Concord by one
of its citizens in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
the author, after speaking of walden and white ponds, ads
in the middle of the latter, may be seen, when

(01:15:18):
the water is very low, a tree which appears as
if it grew in the place where it now stands,
although the roots are fifty feet below the surface of
the water. The top of this tree is broken off
and at the place measures fourteen inches in diameter. In
the spring of forty nine I talked with a man

(01:15:39):
who lives nearest the pond in Sudbury, who told me
that it was he who got out this tree ten
or fifteen years before. As near as he could remember,
it stood twelve or fifteen rods from the shore, where
the water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was
in the winter, and he had been getting out ice
in the forenoon and had resolved it. In the afternoon

(01:16:02):
with the aid of his neighbors, he would take out
the old yellow pine. He sawed a channel in the
ice toward the shore, and hauled it over and along
and out on to the ice with oxen. But before
he had gone far in his work he was surprised
to find that it was wrong end upward, with the

(01:16:24):
stumps of the branches pointing down, and the small end
firmly fastened in the sandy bottom. It was about a
foot in diameter at the big end, and he had
expected to get a good saw log, but it was
so rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if

(01:16:44):
for that he had some of it in his shed.
Then there were marks of an axe and of woodpeckers
on the butt He thought that it might have been
a dead tree on the shore, but was finally blown
over into the pond, and after the top had been
water logged, while the butt end was still dry and
light had drifted out and sunk wrong and up. His father,

(01:17:08):
eighty years old, could not remember when it was not there.
Several pretty large logs may still be seen lying on
the bottom, where, owing to the undulation of the surface,
they look like huge water snakes in motion. This pond
has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there is

(01:17:28):
little in it to tempt a fishermen. Instead of the
white lily, which requires mud, or the common sweet flag,
the blue flag Iris versicolor grows thinly in the pure water,
rising from the stony bottom all around the shore, where
it is visited by humming birds in June. And the color,

(01:17:49):
both of its bluish blades and its flowers, and especially
their reflections, is in singular harmony with the glaucous water
white pond and walled are great crystals on the surface
of the earth lakes of light. If they were permanently

(01:18:10):
congealed and small enough to be clutched, they would perchance
be carried off by slaves like precious stones to adorn
the heads of emperors. But being liquid and ample and
secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them

(01:18:32):
and run after the diamond of Kochanor they are too
pure to have a market value. They contain no muck.
How much more beautiful than our lives, How much more
transparent than our characters are they we never learned meanness

(01:18:58):
of them? How much fairer than the pool before the
farmer's door, in which his ducks swim. Hither the clean
wild ducks come. Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.

(01:19:19):
The birds, with their plumage and their notes, are in
harmony with the flowers. But what youth or maiden conspires
with the wild, luxuriant beauty of nature. She flourishes most alone,
far from the towns where they reside. Talk of Heaven, ye,

(01:19:46):
disgrace Earth. End of chapter nine.

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