Already sparkling blue water

March 29 

Flint’s Pond is entirely open; may have been a day or two. There was only a slight opening about the boat-house on the 21st, and the weather has been very cold ever since. 

March 29, 2016

Walden is more than half open, Goose Pond only a little about the shores, and Fair Haven Pond only just open over the channel of the river. 

There is washed up on the shore of Flint’s some pretty little whorls of the radical leaves of the Lobelia Dortmanna, with its white root-fibres. 

As I stand on Heywood’s Peak, looking over Walden, more than half its surface already sparkling blue water, I inhale with pleasure the cold but wholesome air like a draught of cold water, contrasting it in my memory with the wind of summer, which I do not thus eagerly swallow. This, which is a chilling wind to my fellow, is decidedly refreshing to me, and I swallow it with eagerness as a panacea. I feel an impulse, also, already, to jump into the half-melted pond. This cold wind is refreshing to my palate, as the warm air of summer is not, methinks. I love to stand there and be blown on as much as a horse in July. 

A field of ice nearly half as big as the pond has drifted against the eastern shore and crumbled up against it, forming a shining white wall of its fragments.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 29, 1855

Flint’s Pond is entirely open.See March 21, 1853 (" I am surprised to find Flint's Pond not more than half broken up."); March 21, 1855 ("There is no opening in Flint’s Pond except a very little around the boat-house.”); March 23, 1853 (“The ice went out . . . of Flint's Pond day before yesterday, I have no doubt”); April 1, 1852 (" I am surprised to find Flint's Pond frozen still, which should have been open a week ago.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice Out

Walden is more than half open. A field of ice nearly half as big as the pond has drifted against the eastern shore and crumbled up against it, forming a shining white wall of its fragments. See March 29, 1859 ("Walden is first clear after to-day.”) and note to March 29, 1857 ("Walden open, say to-day, though there is still a little ice in the deep southern bay and a very narrow edging along the southern shore.") See also  March 31, 1855 ("We feel as if we had obtained a new lease of life . . . Looking from the Cliffs I see that Walden is open to-day first.")

Sparkling blue water. See March 2, 1860 (“he great phenomenon these days is the sparkling blue water, — a richer blue than the sky ever is. ”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bright Blue Water

A field of ice nearly half as big as the pond . . ., forming a shining white wall of its fragments. See March 29, 1854 ("Thin cakes of ice at a distance now and then blown up on their edges glistening in the sun.")

March 29. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, March 29

Sparkling blue water

Walden more than half open –

inhale the cold air.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Already sparkling blue water

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

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