The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving-stones,excepting one or two short sand beaches,and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head;and were it not for its remarkable transparency,that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side.Some think it is bottomless.It is nowhere muddy,and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in it;and of noticeable plants,except in the little meadows recently overflowed,which do not properly belong to it,a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush,nor even a lily,yellow or white,but only a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons,and perhaps a water-target or two;all which however a bather might not perceive;and these plants are clean and bright like the element they grow in.The stones extend a rod or two into the water,and then the bottom is pure sand,except in the deepest parts,where there is usually a little sediment,probably from the decay of the leaves which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls,and a bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in the midwinter.
We have one other pond just like this,White Pond,in Nine Acre Corner,about two and a half miles westerly;but,though I am acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of this centre,I do not know a third of this pure and well-like character.Successive nations perchance have drank at,admired,and fathomed it,and passed away,and still its water is green and pellucid as ever.Not an intermitting spring!Perhaps on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in existence,and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind,and covered with myriads of ducks and geese,which had not heard of the fall,when still such pure lakes sufficed them.Even then it had commenced to rise and fall,and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now wear,and obtained a patent of Heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews.Who knows in how many unremembered nations'literatures this has been the Castalian Fountain?or what nymphs presided over it in the Golden Age?It is a gem of the first water which Concord wears in her coronet.
Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace of their footsteps.I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond,even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore,a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hillside,alternately rising and falling,approaching and receding from the water's edge,as old probably as the race of man here,worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters,and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land.This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter,just after a light snow has fallen,appearing as a clear undulating white line,unobscured by weeds and twigs,and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand.The snow reprints it,as it were,in clear white type alto-relievo.The ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built here may still preserve some trace of this.
The pond rises and falls,but whether regularly or not,and within what period,nobody knows,though,as usual,many pretend to know.It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer,though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness.I can remember when it was a foot or two lower,and also when it was at least five feet higher,than when I lived by it.There is a narrow sand-bar running into it,with very deep water on one side,on which I helped boil a kettle of chowder,some six rods from the main shore,about the year 1824,which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years;and,on the other hand,my friends used to listen with incredulity when I told them,that a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods,fifteen rods from the only shore they knew,which place was long since converted into a meadow.But the pond has risen steadily for two years,and now,in the summer of '52,is just five feet higher than when I lived there,or as high as it was thirty years ago,and fishing goes on again in the meadow.This makes a difference of level,at the outside,of six or seven feet;and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount,and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs.This same summer the pond has begun to fall again.It is remarkable that this fluctuation,whether periodical or not,appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment.I have observed one rise and a part of two falls,and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it.Flint's Pond,a mile eastward,allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlet and outlets,and the smaller intermediate ponds also,sympathize with Walden,and recently attained their greatest height at the same time with the latter.The same is true,as far as my observation goes,of White Pond.
