Chapter IX: The Ponds

He rambles to Fair Haven Hill for huckleberries, arguing that their true flavor is lost by the time they reach the market in Boston.

He describes quiet companionship with a fisherman, raising echoes with his paddle, and fishing by moonlight while serenaded by owls and foxes.

He provides a particular description of Walden Pond, noting its remarkable depth, purity, and the changing colors of its water.

The pond's bottom is clean sand and stones, and its plants and fish are cleaner and handsomer than those in the river.

He discusses the mysterious long-term fluctuation of the pond's water level, which kills trees at its edge and asserts its title to a shore.

He recounts an Indian fable about the pond's creation and dismisses the mystery of its paved shore by observing the surrounding stony hills.

The pond served as his well, its deep water staying cool in summer, and he lists the clean, firm-fleshed varieties of fish that inhabit it.

He describes the pond's irregular shore and calls a lake the landscape's most beautiful feature, 'earth's eye,' into which the beholder measures his own nature.

On a calm afternoon, he observes the perfectly smooth, 'glassy' surface of the pond, where every motion produces a flash of light.

In November, he is surprised to find myriads of small perch sporting in the calm water, as if improving the short season before winter.

He recalls old stories of the pond and laments how woodchoppers, the railroad, and villagers seeking to pipe its water have profaned it.

Despite the changes, he finds the pond itself unchanged and perennially young, a 'God's Drop' that washes out the soot of the city.

He describes a walk to the larger, shallower Flint's Pond and decries the injustice of naming a beautiful landscape after an 'unclean and stupid farmer.'

He describes his 'lake country,' particularly White Pond, a lesser twin of Walden, and calls them great crystals, too pure to have a market value.