Summary: Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors
Thoreau spends many winter evenings alone beside his fire,
while the snow whirls violently outside his house. He is able to
dig a path to town through the deep snow, but has few visitors to
his neck of the woods in this cold season. Alone in the wilderness,
Thoreau finds himself compelled to conjure up images of those who
had endured the hard Walden winters before him.
Although the route between Concord and Lincoln is sparsely populated,
Thoreau believes it had been settled more thickly earlier in the
century. Many of the earlier inhabitants had been blacks: Thoreau
summons up images of Cato Ingraham, the spinster Zilpha, Brister
Freeman and his wife, Fenda. Some of their abodes have almost completely
vanished, destroyed by age or fire. Thoreau recalls how Breed’s
hut burned to the ground in a fire twelve years before. Thoreau
and the local fire brigade had rushed out to save it, but had found
it too far gone. Thoreau recalls seeing the heir to the house lying
in shock, muttering to himself about the loss of his property. Near
Lincoln, a potter named Wyman had once squatted, followed by his
descendants. Another memorable recent inhabitant of the woods was
an Irishman named Hugh Quoil, formerly a soldier at the Battle of
Waterloo, who had come to live at the Wyman place. All these old-timers
are now gone, and Thoreau lives alone amid the ravaged foundations
and empty cellar holes that once marked their homes. The site of
a once burgeoning village is, by Thoreau’s time, marked only by
decay, and by grasses and lilacs planted in more prosperous times
and outliving their planters. Thoreau muses on the insignificance
and transience of humankind’s place in nature.
Thoreau has sparse contact with other humans in the depths
of winter, and even animals keep to themselves at times. Among Thoreau’s
most reliable companions are the barred owl, an occasional woodchopper,
and his friends William Ellery Channing and the philosopher Amos
Bronson Alcott. Thoreau’s mentor and benefactor, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
also comes. None of these men is directly named in the text, however.
Emerson is identified as the “Old Immortal.” Thoreau keeps regular
watch for “the Visitor who never comes,” conforming to an ancient
Hindu law of hospitality.
Summary: Winter Animals
Walking over a frozen pond, Thoreau finds everything more
open and spacious, with wide yards for sliding and skating on the
frozen surface. On these days, the air is filled with the call of
the hoot owl and the cry of the goose resounding through the woods.
In the morning the red squirrels scuttle and scavenge, at dusk the
rabbits come for their feedings, and on moonlit nights the foxes
search the snow for prey. Such sounds come and go, but the sounds
of snow falling and ice cracking continue through the day and the
night. Thoreau places the harvest’s unripe corn at his doorstep,
attracting smaller squirrels and rabbits to feed near his dwelling.
Sometimes he sits and watches the little creatures paw at their
food for hours. At other times they carry their bounty away into
the forest, discarding their refuse in various spots. This refuse
attracts the jays, chickadees, and sparrows that descend upon the
leftover cobs and pick at them. On certain mornings and afternoons,
Thoreau hears hounds yelping in pursuit of their quarry. Thoreau
often talks with the huntsmen who pass by Walden.
Summary: The Pond in Winter
Thoreau’s first task on waking up is to collect water
for the day. In the winter this job proves difficult, as he has
to chop through the ice. He is soon joined by a hardy group of fisherman.
Thoreau is amused by their primitive methods, but is more amazed
by what they catch, notably the distinctively colored pickerel,
which stands out from the more typically celebrated cod and haddock
of the sea.
In an effort to measure the depth of Walden Pond and
dispel the myth that it is bottomless, Thoreau uses a fishing line
and a light stone. Many locals believe the pond to be bottomless,
but Thoreau measures it at just over one hundred feet. Thoreau meditates
on the way people wish to believe in a symbol of heaven and infinity. Through
repeated soundings, Thoreau is able to get a general sense of the
shape of Walden Pond’s bottom, and learns that it conforms to the
surrounding terrain. The pond reaches its greatest depth at the
point of its greatest length and breadth. Thoreau wonders if this might
be a clue to pinpointing the deepest points of larger bodies of water,
such as oceans. To test this hypothesis, Thoreau plumbs the nearby
White Pond. Again, the point of greatest depth is quite near to
the point where the axis of greatest length intersects the axis
of greatest breadth. Having more evidence to bolster his theory,
Thoreau extends it to a metaphorical level, supposing that a person’s behavior
and circumstances will determine the depths of his or her soul.
