Thoreau Country: Location Note

Walden Pond

Photo: Melting Ice, Walden Pond, 8 April 2001

"The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly than the deep. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer....

"Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end...It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore,-- a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again."

[Text is from "Spring," Walden. "Leuciscus" is the scientific name of a minnow, from the Greek root meaning white, and is sibilantly pronounced lu-sis-kus. Photo of Walden Pond is by Paul H. Carr <http://www.MirrorOfNature.org> and is used with permission.]

This page by S. Ells, rev. May 2007, <http://homepage.mac.com/sfe/henry/index.html>.