Feb. 19, 1852. .... To White Pond.
Considering the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds, by an ocular illusion the bars appearing to approach each other in the east and west horizons, I am prompted to ask whether the melons will not be found to lie in this direction oftenest. The strains from my muse are as rare nowadays, or of late years, as the notes of birds in the winter, the faintest occasional tinkling sound, and mostly of the woodpecker kind or the harsh jay or crow. It never melts into a song. Only the day-day-day of an inquisitive titmouse.
Everywhere snow, gathered into sloping drifts about the walls and fences, and, beneath the snow, the frozen ground, and men are compelled to deposit the summer's provision in burrows in the earth like the ground squirrel. Many creatures, daunted by the prospect, migrated in the fall, but man remains and walks over the frozen snow-crust and over the stiffened rivers and ponds, and draws now upon his summer stores. Life is reduced to its lowest terms. There is no home for you now, in this freezing wind, but in that shelter which you prepared in the summer. You steer straight across the fields to that in season. I can with difficulty tell when I am over the river. There is a similar crust over my heart. Where I rambled in the summer and gathered flowers and rested on the grass by the brook-side in the shade, now no grass nor flowers, no brook nor shade, but cold, unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile, and no place to sit.
Look at White Pond, that crystal drop that was, in which the umbrageous shore was reflected, and schools of fabulous perch and shiners rose to the surface, and with difficulty you made your way along the pebbly shore in a summer afternoon to the bathing-place [Sachem's Cove]. Now you stalk rapidly across where it was, muffled in your cloak, over a more level snow-field than usual, furrowed by the wind, its finny inhabitants and its pebbly shore all hidden and forgotten, and you would shudder at the thought of wetting your feet in it.
-H.D.T.
Feb. 19, 2021. 28 degrees.
Mid-afternoon I visit White Pond. A light snow has been falling throughout much of the day with about five or six inches of accumulation. The opaque, gray sky appears uniform as if a blanket - the opposite of unusual cloud formations as Thoreau saw. I walk from the Town's White Pond beach, where we have spent so many summer hours whiling away in the sun, in and out of the water. The sweep of the snowy surface obscures the boundary between shore and ice, with exception of a row of alder trees standing along the edge of this notheastern shore. With some degree of awe and inspiration, I walk directly across the ice of the pond to the southwest. In dramatic contrast to a busy summer day, when the waters of this pond are full of activity, laughter and play, today the ice- and snow-capped pond feels solitary and quiet, with only me, two ice fishers, and a few snow sledders in the nearby woods. Distant sounds of the train and cars, and the laughs and shouts of the sledders have a muffled quality, mere backdrop accompaniments to the patter of the snow on my shoulders and mild wind from the east and north.
Along the edge of the pond, I see billowing snowdrifts over rock walls, swimming docks, temporarily forgotten boats including a canoe, and a fence as I make my way toward the Transcendentalists' bathing-place in the far southwest cove. I examine a light blue hole in the ice left by ice fishers, thinking about what fish and other creatures, many dormant in the muddy pond bottom, lie beneath. I turn and look back within the entrance to the cove. Walking on the ice, as if walking on water, feels otherworldly, being so rare of an opportunity here now in our changed climate. I am reminded of this same feeling I got on the many laps I took here on early mornings last summer on my stand-up paddle board - it’s cystal waters now transformed into the relatively unblemished white sheet before me.
In contrast to Thoreau's nostalgic, even melancholy mood, in which he pines for warmer months when he finds his muse, I feel joyous in this now-rarer winter opportunity, my own muse bright and present. In Thoreau's time, without central heating and electricity for artificial lights, people's winter habits were undoubtedly more dormant and inward, as they chipped away from their harvested pantry stores in earthen basements. But even today, despite our thriving, multivarious world, from ski resorts to indoor hockey rinks, soccer fields, basketball courts and water parks, etc., etc., winter is a more dormant, darker time; and transformed, quiet places such at this are a strong reminder of the extra space, solitude and interpersonal distance that this season brings.
The birds are decidedly quieter and fewer now, as Thoreau notes. But, as if on cue during my walk back, I hear the chipping sound of a bird and spot a single downy woodpecker high up in a white birch to my right.
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