Chapter 63 lake - 1

Sometimes, tired of human society and its talk, and tired of all my village friends, I wandered westward, past my usual quarters, into the more uninhabited parts of the town, to on the "new woods and new pastures"; or, as the sun goes down, on Fair Haven Hill, to munch on its huckleberries and berries, and to gather them up for a few days.Fruit is not willing to enjoy its color, aroma, and taste to those who buy it, nor to the merchant who cultivates it for sale.There is only one way to enjoy that sight, smell, and taste, and yet few people practice it.If you want to know the color, smell and taste of lingonberries, you have to ask the shepherd boy and the partridge.It is a vulgar fallacy that those who have never picked lingonberries think they have tasted all of its color, smell, and taste.A huckleberry never made it to Boston, and though they grew in abundance on the three Boston hills, they never entered the city.The delicacy and essential part of the fruit wears away, along with its brilliance, when it is carted to market, and it becomes mere food.As long as eternal justice rules the universe, not a pure huckleberry can be transported from the mountains outside the city to the city.

Occasionally, after my day's hoeing, I come upon an impatient mate who has been fishing on the lake since morning, as still and motionless as a duck, or a sheet of floating , meditating on his various philosophies, and by the time I arrived he probably considered himself to belong to the ancient sect of monks.There was an old man, a good fisherman, especially a carpenter of all kinds, who took pleasure in seeing my house as one built for the convenience of fishermen, and I was equally pleased that he sat at my door trimming his lines.Occasionally we went boating together on the lake, he at one end of the boat and I at the other; we did not exchange many words, because he had been deaf in recent years, and occasionally he hummed a hymn, which was very similar to mine. Philosophy is remarkably harmonious.Our spiritual friendship was actually all harmonious, and it was wonderful in retrospect, much more interesting than our conversation. I used to be like this, when I couldn't find anyone to talk to, I beat the side of my boat with my oar, looking for an echo, so that The surrounding forest was aroused in circles and expanding waves, like the herd in the zoo. Every hill and verdant valley finally roared.

In mild twilight I used to sit in a boat and play my flute, and see the perch swimming about me as if my flute charmed them, while the moonlight traveled on the ribbed waves, which were still scattered With broken forest.I came to this lake on expeditions long ago, some summer nights, with a companion; a fire was built by the water's edge, to attract schools of fish, and we again put The worms baited the cod; and so we kept till well after night before we threw the sticks high in the air, and they fell through the air like meteors into the lake with some loud hissing noises, went out, and we were suddenly groping in total darkness.I whistled and sang, walked through the darkness, and went to the crossroads to the place where human beings gathered.But now I have my own home on the shore of the lake.

Sometimes, staying in one of the village parlors until the whole family was resting, I went back to the forest; then, more or less for tomorrow's meal, I spent the midnight hours fishing in the moonlight, Sitting in a boat, listening to owls and foxes singing their serenade, from time to time I also heard the shrill whistling of unknown birds nearby.These experiences are very memorable and dear to me, having dropped anchor in forty feet of water, about two or three rods from the shore, surrounded by sometimes thousands of small perch and whitebait, Their tails punctuate the moonlit surface with innumerable dimples; and with a slender twine I have dealt with some mysterious nocturnal fish that live at forty feet of water, sometimes dragging Sixty feet of line, and as the gentle night wind drifted my boat across the lake, I felt now and then a faint vibration that there was a life lingering on that end of the line, foolishly uncertain. It hadn't quite made up its mind what to do with what it had bumped into blindly.At last, hand after hand, you slowly pull on the line while some horned cod creak and writhe and are drawn into the air.Especially in the dark of night, when your mind is racing on the subject of the vast universe, it is strange that you feel this faint vibration that interrupts your dreams and reconnects you with nature of.It seemed to me that I would then throw the line up and into the sky, as I would at the same time throw it into the element of water, which is not necessarily denser.It was like I caught two fish with one hook.