Walden Chapter 17 Notes - Spring

Walden Chapter 17 Notes - Spring

1. By the first of April, spring has arrived, and the water wears aways whatever surrounding ice there was.

   • Water in summer is warmer closer to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, it gets colder.
   • It was a phenomena to watch the melting of the ice
     • Few phenomena gave the author more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which he passed on my way to the village.
       • Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.
   • One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that the author would have leisure and opportunity to see the Spring come in.
   • Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to those who live in a climate of so great extremes.
   • Walden is a melting space

2. Spring brings in green leaves on trees, and the budding of flowers, which is such an experience to see.

   • When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter
   • The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever!
   • The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim.
   • As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.
   • A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener
   • Author liked to observe all the activity that the animals and birds did during spring

3. Thus was the authors first year’s life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. The author finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.

   • The author is leaving Walden Pond now.