Chapter 16: The Pond in Winter

Chapter 16: The Pond in Winter

1. Winter's effects on the narrator

   • One winter morning the narrator woke somewhat confused from a restless and troubled sleep
   • It has been a long winter and he has been anxious and disturbed about his spiritual life

2. Imbued with a new sense of vitality, he energetically began his morning work by taking his pail to the pond and searching for water beneath the ice and snow

3. Observing the frozen lake

   • He cut a hole in the ice and, while drawing water, enjoyed looking through this window into the depths below
   • Soon he caught a glimpse of the life moving below the ice. He was overjoyed with the sight
   • The narrator then tells us that in the late winter of 1846, before the ice broke up, he measured the depth and charted the topography of the pond's bottom. He found that Walden was one hundred and seven feet deep
   • People are taking ice to sell in warmer weather

4. Morning routine

   • The narrator tells us that in the mornings he would bathe his intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta
   • Imaginative reverence