Chapter 70 lake - 8

Flint Pond, or Sand Pond, is our largest lake or inland sea in the Lincoln district, and lies about a mile east of Walden.It is much larger, a hundred and ninety-six acres, it is said, and more fishy, ​​but the water is shallower and not quite pure.A walk through the woods to get there once is often my pastime.Even if it's just to let the wind blow freely in your face, even if it's just to see the waves, and think about the boat's life at sea, it's worth it.In autumn, on a windy day, I went there to pick up chestnuts, which fell into the water and were swept up to my feet by the waves.Once I was crawling on the reedy shore, with the fresh spray splashing into my face, I came upon the wreck of a ship, the sides gone, and among the rushes, almost a flat-bottomed impression; but its The model was clearly there, as if it were a large decayed deck skid, and the veins were clear.It was the most impressive wreck imaginable on the coast, and there was a good lesson in it.But now it is only a vegetated model and an inconspicuous lakeshore, with calamus and rushes growing in the middle.I often admire the traces of ripples on the sandy beach at the bottom of the lake on the north shore. The bottom of the lake has been pressed hard by the pressure of the water, or the foot of the wader can feel its hardness. In line with this trace, row after row, as if the waves had planted them.There I also found some curious bulbs, in considerable numbers, apparently fine grasses or roots, perhaps composed of corn-spirit roots, from half an inch to four inches in diameter, in perfectly round bodies.These balls rolled with the waves in the shallow sand, and were sometimes washed ashore.They are either compact grass balls or have a bag of fine sand in the center.At first you will say that it is caused by the motion of the waves, like pebbles; but the smallest half-inch spheres, as rough in texture as the larger ones, are produced at only one season of the year.I suspect that these waves do more to destroy than to build something that has already been formed.These spherical balls can keep their shape for a certain period of time after they come out of the water.

Lake of Flint!Such poverty is our naming!What right does a filthy and ignorant farmer who plows in this watery sky and rapes the lake's shores call this lake by his own name?A stingy man, probably, who prefers the reflection of an ocean or a bright horn, from which he can see his own shameless thick face; even the wild ducks come to him, and he thinks they are trespassers; he is used to Because of the cruel and greedy grabbing, the fingers have become like curved eagle claws, the name of this lake does not suit me.I never went there to see this Flint, nor to hear about him; he never saw the lake, never swam in it, never loved it, never protected it, Never said a good word about it, never thanked God for making it.The lake might as well have been named after the fish that swim in it, or the birds or beasts that frequent it, or the wild flowers that grow on its shores, or some wild man or wild child whose Life was intertwined with this lake; instead of using his name, he has no title to the lake except his like-minded neighbors and the deeds that the law gives him,--he thinks only of the value of money; he Cursed the whole lakeshore by its mere existence, he has exhausted the lakeside lands, and probably will still fish; all he is complaining about is that there is no pasture for Englishgrass or cranberries—which, it seems to him, does. There is no way to make up for it——he even preferred to dry the lake for the sake of selling the sludge at the bottom of the lake.The lake water can't turn the mill for him, and he doesn't feel that enjoying the scenery is a kind of right.I don't respect his labors at all, his fields are marked with prices everywhere, he can put the landscape, even God, in the market, if it will give him some profit; he is in the market for his God ;in his fields nothing grows free, no grain grows in his fields, no flower grows in his pastures, no fruit grows in his trees, but only money grows; he loves not his The beauty of fruit, he thought, was that his fruit was not ripe until it was turned into money.Let me live the poor life of the real rich.The poorer the farmers, the more I respect and care them!What a model farm!The farmhouses there stood up like fungus on a cesspit, and people, horses, cows, and pigs all had clean or unclean rooms, and they infect each other!People live in it like animals!A big grease stain, the smell of poop and cheese mixed together!Under a high civilization, human hearts and human brains become manure like excrement!As if you were planting beans on a cemetery!This is the so-called model farm!

No, no; if the most beautiful scenery should be named after a person, let it be the name of the noblest and most valuable person.Our lake should at least have a real name like the Sea of ​​Icarus, where "the sound of the sea still speaks of a valiant attempt." Goose Pond is smaller, on my way to Flint Pond; Fair Harbor, a tail of the Concord River, is seventy acres in size, a mile to the southwest; White Pond, about forty acres in size. , a mile and a half past Fair Harbor.This is my Lake District.These, and the Concord River, are my Lake District; night and day, year after year, they crush the grain of rice I send.

The most charming, if not the most beautiful, of all these ponds, since the Woodman, the Railroad, and myself have dishonored Walden, is White Pond, the jewel of the wood; , the name is probably derived from the purity of the water, perhaps due to the color of the sand grains.In these respects, as in others, it is a twin, but a lesser, to Walden.They are so similar that you would say they must be connected underground.The shores of the same boulders have the same color of water.As at Walden, when looking through the woods in a hot dog's day to some bays which are not the deepest, the reflection from the bottom gives the waves a misty cyan, or sea-blue tinge.I used to go there many years ago, cartloads of sand to be made into sandpaper, and I've been going there ever since.People who often go to play want to call it the new green lake.It may also be called Ponderosa Lake, owing to the following circumstances.About fifteen years ago, when you went there, you could still see the canopy of a pinus pine, which is not a prominent plant, but it was called the ponderosa pine in the vicinity.The pine tree juts out over the deep water of the lake, a few rods from the shore.So it is even said that the lake has sunk, and that this pine tree is a remnant of a former virgin forest in this place, as far back as 1792, in the libraries of the Massachusetts Historical Society, A citizen of that state wrote a "Concord Chronicle," in which the author, after speaking of Walden and White Pond, goes on to say, "In White Pond, after the water level has fallen, one can see a a tree, as if it had originally grown here, though its roots were fifty feet below the surface of the water, and the top of the tree had long since broken off, and the broken place was fourteen inches in diameter." .In the spring of 1849 I had a conversation with a man who lived in Sudbury, who was nearest to the pond, and he told me that it was he who had taken the tree ten or fifteen years before.As far as he could remember, the tree was twelve or fifteen rods from the shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep.It was winter, and in the morning he went to fetch ice, and decided that in the afternoon his neighbor would help him and fetch the old yellow pine.He sawed a long strip of ice, straight to the shore, and then used his oxen to drag the tree, intending to pull it up and drag it onto the ice; On the opposite end, the stumps were all downwards, while the smaller end clung to the sandy lake bottom.The big end was a foot in diameter, and he had hoped to get some lumber to saw up, but the trunk was so rotten that it was good for firewood, if at all.At that time, he still had a little at home, and there were ax marks and woodpecker marks on the bottom.He thought it was a dead tree on the shore of the lake, and then the wind blew it into the lake. The top of the tree was flooded with water, and the bottom was still dry, so it was relatively light. When it was poured into the water, it turned upside down.His eighty-year-old father can't even remember when the ponderosa pine disappeared.You can still see some large logs at the bottom of the lake, but because of the fluctuation of the water surface, they look like some winding giant water snakes.

This lake is seldom defiled by boats, for there are few creatures in it that attract fishermen.There are no white lilies that need sludge, nor irises in general, but in that pure water, blue iris (Iris versicolor) grows rarely on boulders at the bottom of the lake around the shore, and in June, Hummingbirds came, and the blue leaves and blue flowers, especially their reflection, were in harmony with the blue waves of the sea. White Pond and Walden Pond are two great crystals on the face of the earth, they are shining lakes, and if they were frozen for ever, and small enough to be taken, perhaps they would have been taken by the slaves , like gems, adorned the king's crown; yet, its liquid was also vast, so it was reserved for us and our posterity forever, but we left them for the big diamonds of Keshio, they really Too pure to have a market price, they are not polluted.Compared with our lives, they are so much more beautiful, and compared to our characters, they are so much more transparent!We never know what's wrong with them.Compared with the pond where the ducks swim in front of the farmhouse, how beautiful they are!The cleaning mallard has come here.In the natural world, there is no human dweller who can appreciate her.Birds, with their plumage and music, are in harmony with flowers, but what youth or maiden is in harmony with the rough and gorgeous beauty of nature?Nature flourished in great solitude, far from the town where they lived.Say heaven!You insult the earth.