Walden

Thoreau’s description and metaphorical use of the pond conveys many themes about change and how even the most stable of, the most set in our ways, can have our perspectives, values, and ideas altered. Thoreau really emphasizes a sort of cycle here with the pond as it thunders in the morning, goes quiet in the afternoon, and thunders again as the sun retreats into the night. This cycle, along with many different analogies, demonstrates the persistence of change and the ‘ponds’ way of reacting to this change. In many ways Thoreau’s cycle can illustrate a form of changing, existing, and then changing again. This cycle is one that everything in the universe undergoes, constant unescapable change, and Thoreau does an incredible job as using Walden pond as a surrogate to portray how change effects everything, including large almost immovable bodies of water. Further down in the paragraph Thoreau states, “Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive?”, in many ways the pond can serve as a parallel for Thoreau and his journey to discovering deeper meaning of life through living at Walden pond. Thoreau came to the pond searching for deeper meaning, at the beginning of his journey he was not as affected by nature, but overtime grew a deep admiration and affinity for all that existed around him in the environment. I think this paragraph was a really beautiful analogy for change and ties directly into the chapter name, “Spring”.

[ We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty]

This entire chapter rightfully reads as a goodbye to Walden pond, but this sentence in particular really sticks out. This is why Thoreau moved out to Walden in the first place. It was to live in the moment, to escape the constant rush forward of modern society and find out what truly mattered to him. I believe the documentary also mentioned he was grieving a sibling, which may be alluded to in the part about not “atoning for the neglect of past opportunities”.

@ekclodfelter: I take him to mean both—that is, the particular robin sitting on a particular twig that he heard on a particular summer day.

[and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. ]

Funny callback to the previous chapter.

[If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig. ]

Is he wishing to locate the twig or the robin? Thoreau has lost me.

[Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? ]

I feel like this is a metaphor for Thoreau himself after spending his time being a “hermit” out in nature reconnecting with himself and his purpose after the passing of his brother.

@courtneygoodwin: You pose a great question here about how Thoreau sees humans relative to (other) animals. He certainly makes it clear that there are times that he prefers solitude to human company, and that in these times he isn’t without company since he has the company of so many other living things. And he’s certainly troubled by the extractive and instrumental approach that so many humans take towards nature: for example, cutting the ice out of the pond to sell it. But he also celebrates many of his human companions, such as the visitors to his cabin and some of the “former inhabitants” of Walden Woods that he describes in the chapter by that name. And he recognizes that animals aren’t always peaceful: consider the war of the red and black ants. His chapter “Higher Laws” is interesting for its complicated exploration of the higher and lower elements in humans; it seems important to Thoreau for humans to rise above their animal nature in some respects.

These are great observations, @averyw. Thoreau was a close observer of nature all his adult life, but he certainly did get more systematic, detailed, and scientific in his observations over time, and especially beginning in the early 1850s. I love your point about the interplay of scientific observation and metaphor here. I don’t know if it’s possible to say which is his starting point in this case. I agree that his point here is partly to chide his fellow humans for accepting myths that they could easily test with simple measurement, and one of the best things in this paragraph is his pun on bottom/foundation in making this point: “There have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves.” But it appears Thoreau isn’t totally down on those who believe the myth of the pond’s bottomlessness, since he ends the paragraph by saying that “I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.” He seems glad that the myth reflects the human urge to believe in the infinite.

[The hares (Lepus Americanus) were very familiar]

As in paragraph 5 of “Winter Animals,” where Thoreau comes back to the manuscript page in Version F to insert the Latin name for the red squirrel (“Sciurus Hudsonius”) with a caret, adding it above the line, so in paragraph 14 he comes back to the manuscript to insert the name for the hare (“Lepus Americanus”) in similar fashion. In this case, however, he first adds the caret and inserted words in pencil, then traces over them in ink. At the far left of the page, near the penciled “P. 434” (probably not Thoreau’s), we see “v. lp,” Thoreau’s cross-reference meaning “vide [see] last page.”

A few leaves farther on in HM 924, where Thoreau has interlined material that ends up in paragraph 13, following the words “grow up densely” (which close out paragraph 13) we can see that Thoreau has written “The hares &c” and a matching cross-reference: “vnp” (i.e., “vide next page”).

The cross-references suggest that these two pages were at one point adjacent in the manuscript, even though they’re now a few pages apart, with the order of “next” and “last” (i.e., previous) reversed. Thoreau re-arranged manuscript pages frequently in the process of revising, and there’s no way to know what their final order was at the time they were inherited by his sister Sophia. The manuscript’s complicated transmission history ensured that the order in which Thoreau kept them was lost.

This passage makes me wonder how much Thoreau revised his ideas about “laws of Nature” while drafting Walden. The metaphor of shifting perspectives, like a mountain changing shape as you move, feels so polished and intentional that I’m curious whether it appeared early in his notes or if it emerged later as he refined the chapter. I’d love to know whether he experimented with different images before settling on this one, or if his thinking about nature’s hidden harmonies evolved over multiple drafts. It seems like the kind of idea that might have deepened as he reworked the manuscript.