A wilder experience than the town affords

December 28. Sunday. 

Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here.

Walden completely frozen over again last night. Goodwin & Co. are fishing there to-day. Ice about four inches thick, occasionally sunk by the snow beneath the water. 

They have had but poor luck. One middling-sized pickerel and one large yellow perch only, since 9 or 10 a. m. It is now nearly sundown. 

The perch is very full of spawn. How handsome, with its broad dark transverse bars, sharp narrow triangles, broadest on the back! 

The men are standing or sitting about a smoky fire of damp dead wood, near by the spot where many a fisherman has sat before, and I draw near, hoping to hear a fish story. 

One says that Louis Menan, the French Canadian who lives in Lincoln, fed his ducks on the fresh-water clams which he got at Fair Haven Pond. He saw him open the shells, and the ducks snapped them up out of the shells very fast. 

I observe that some shrub oak leaves have but little silveriness beneath, as if they were a variety, the color of the under approaching that of the upper surface somewhat. 

Since the snow of the 23d, the days seem considerably lengthened, owing to the increased light after sundown. 

The fishermen sit by their damp fire of rotten pine wood, so wet and chilly that even smoke in their eyes is a kind of comfort. There they sit, ever and anon scanning their reels to see if any have fallen, and, if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords. 

There lies a pickerel or perch on the ice, waving a fin or lifting its gills from time to time, gasping its life away. 

I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it. 

As the Esquimaux of Smith's Strait in North Greenland laughed when Kane warned them of their utter extermination, cut off as they were by ice on all sides from their race, unless they attempted in season to cross the glacier southward, so do I laugh when you tell me of the danger of impoverishing myself by isolation. It is here that the walrus and the seal, and the white bear, and the eider ducks and auks on which I batten, most abound.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1856


Walden completely frozen over again last night. See December 19, 1856 ("Walden froze completely over last night . . . "); December 21, 1856 ("The pond is open again in the middle, owing to the rain of yesterday."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle."); December 27, 1856 ("Walden is still open in one place of considerable extent, just off the east cape of long southern bay.").

. . .  if not catching many fish, still getting what they went for, though they may not be aware of it, i. e. a wilder experience than the town affords. See January 1, 1856 ("Here are two fishermen, and one has preceded them. They have not had a bite, and know not why. It has been a clear winter day.") June 26, 1853 ("Fishing is often the young man's introduction to the forest and wild. As a hunter and fisher he goes thither until at last the naturalist or poet distinguishes that which attracted him first, and he leaves the gun and rod behind. The mass of men are still and always young men in this respect. They do not think they are lucky unless they get a long string of fish, though they have the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while. Many of my fellow-citizens might go fishing a thousand times, perchance, before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure, -- before they began to angle for the pond itself."); October 4, 1858 ("A man runs down, fails, loses self-respect, and goes a-fishing, though he were never seen on the river before. . . There he stands at length, per chance better employed than ever, holding communion with nature and himself and coming to understand his real position and relation to men in this world. ")

Since the snow of the 23d, the days seem considerably lengthened, owing to the increased light after sundown. See December 17, 1850 ("I noticed when the snow first came that the days were very sensibly lengthened by the light being reflected from the snow. Any work which required light could be pursued about half an hour longer.")

I thrive best on solitude. . . . See August 2, 1854 ("I must cultivate privacy. It is very dissipating to be with people too much.")