Walden: The Pond in Winter

After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what—how—when—where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution. “O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether.”

一个寂静的冬夜过后，我醒来时有一种印象，好像有人向我提了一个问题，我在睡梦中一直在徒劳地设法回答——什么——怎样——何时——何地？可是那正在破晓的大自然，一切生灵都生活在她里面，正从我宽大的窗口往里看，脸上安详而满足，嘴边并没有问题。我醒来面对的是一个已经得到回答的问题，面对的是大自然和白昼。积雪深深地覆盖着点缀着小松树的大地，连我的房子所在的那座小山的山坡，都好像在说：向前！大自然不提问题，也不回答我们凡人提出的问题。她早就下定了决心。“啊，王子，我们的眼睛以赞叹的目光注视着这个宇宙奇妙而多样的景象，并把它传送给灵魂。黑夜无疑遮住了这光荣的造化的一部分；可是白昼来了，向我们揭示这伟大的作品，它从大地一直延伸到以太的原野。”

Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining-rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

然后去做我早晨的工作。首先，我拿起一把斧头和一只桶，去找水，如果这不是一场梦的话。一个寒冷多雪的夜晚过后，找水需要一根探水的魔杖。每年冬天，湖面那流动的、颤抖的水面，原本对每一丝气息都那样敏感，映照着每一道光和影，这时都冻成了一英尺或一英尺半厚的固体，能承受最重的车马，也许雪又把它盖上同样的厚度，它就和任何一块平坦的田野分不出来了。像周围山中的土拨鼠一样，它合上眼睑，休眠三个月或者更久。我站在这片积雪覆盖的平原上，就像站在群山中的一片牧场上，先砍开一英尺厚的雪，再砍开一英尺厚的冰，在我的脚下打开一扇窗，我跪下来喝水，往下望着鱼儿们那安静的客厅，那里弥漫着一种柔和的光，好像透过一扇磨砂玻璃窗照进来的一样，铺着明亮沙子的地板，和夏天时一样；那里统治着一种终年无波的宁静，就像琥珀色的黄昏天空，与那里的居民冷静而平和的性情正相符合。天堂不仅在我们的头上，也在我们的脚下。

Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men come with fishing-reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they would be ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial. They never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less than they have done. The things which they practice are said not yet to be known. Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait. You look into his pail with wonder as into a summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at home, or knew where she had retreated. How, pray, did he get these in midwinter? Oh, he got worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he caught them. His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him. The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

清早，万物都还被霜冻得脆生生的，人们就带着钓鱼的绕线轮和简单的午餐来了，他们把细细的钓线穿过雪原放下去，钓狗鱼和鲈鱼；这些野性的人，本能地遵循着与他们的同乡不同的风尚，信赖着不同的权威，他们来来往往，把城镇缝合在一起，不然的话，那些地方就会裂开。他们穿着结实的厚呢大衣，坐在岸边干燥的橡树叶上吃午饭，他们在自然知识方面的聪明，正如城里人在人为知识方面的聪明一样。他们从来不查阅书本，他们知道的、能说出来的，远比他们做过的少。他们所做的事情，据说还没有为人所知。这里有一个人用长大了的鲈鱼做饵钓狗鱼。你惊奇地往他的桶里看，就像在看一个夏天的湖，好像他把夏天锁在了家里，或者知道夏天退到了哪里。请问，在隆冬时节，他是怎么弄到这些鱼的呢？哦，地冻了以后，他从烂木头里找出虫子来，就这样钓到了它们。他的生活本身比博物学家的研究更深地进入了自然；他自己就是博物学家研究的一个对象。博物学家用小刀轻轻地掀起苔藓和树皮，寻找昆虫；而他却用斧头把木头一直劈到中心，苔藓和树皮飞得到处都是。他靠剥树皮谋生。这样一个人有某种钓鱼的权利，我喜欢看到大自然在他身上得到实现。鲈鱼吞下蛴螬，狗鱼吞下鲈鱼，渔夫又吞下狗鱼；于是生物阶梯上所有的空隙都被填满了。

When I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was sometimes amused by the primitive mode which some ruder fisherman had adopted. He would perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore, and having fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you walked halfway round the pond.

在有雾的天气里，我绕着湖散步的时候，有时看到某个更粗犷的渔夫采用的原始方法，觉得很好玩。他也许会在冰上那些窄窄的洞口上放几根桤木枝，那些洞彼此相隔四五杆，离岸也是这么远，他把钓线的一端拴在一根棍子上，免得它被拖下去，再把松着的钓线搭在一根桤木细枝上，离冰面一英尺多高，在上面拴一片干橡树叶，叶子被拉下去，就表明有鱼咬钩了。你绕着湖走上半圈，就能看见这些桤木枝每隔一定的距离，在雾中隐隐约约地显现出来。

Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here—that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven.

啊，瓦尔登湖的狗鱼！当我看见它们躺在冰上，或者躺在渔夫在冰上凿出的、开一个小洞放水进去的井里，我总是为它们罕见的美而惊奇，好像它们是传说中的鱼，它们和街道那样格格不入，甚至和树林也格格不入，就像阿拉伯之于我们康科德的生活一样陌生。它们有一种十分耀眼的、超凡的美，使它们和那些在我们街上大肆吹嘘的、死尸般的鳕鱼和黑线鳕远远地区别开来。它们不像松树那样绿，不像石头那样灰，也不像天空那样蓝；可是在我看来，如果可能的话，它们有着更罕见的颜色，像花朵，像宝石，好像它们是瓦尔登湖水的珍珠，是湖水的动物化了的核心或结晶。它们当然从里到外全是瓦尔登；它们本身就是动物界里的小瓦尔登，是瓦尔登派。令人惊奇的是，它们竟然在这里被捉到——在这又深又宽的泉水里，远在瓦尔登路上来往的那些辘辘的车马、轻便马车和叮当作响的雪橇下面，竟游着这种金色和翠绿色的大鱼。我从来没有碰巧在任何市场上见过这种鱼；在那里，它会成为众目所注的焦点。它们只轻易地抽搐几下，就交出了它们水中的灵魂，就像一个凡人还没到时候，就被提升到了天上稀薄的空气里。

A factory-owner, hearing what depth I had found, thought that it could not be true, for, judging from his acquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so steep an angle. But the deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to their area as most suppose, and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys. They are not like cups between the hills; for this one, which is so unusually deep for its area, appears in a vertical section through its centre not deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which he describes as “a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms deep, four miles in breadth,” and about fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains, observes, “If we could have seen it immediately after the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it, before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it have appeared!

有一个工厂主，听说我测出的深度，认为那不可能是真的，因为根据他对水坝的了解，沙子不可能以那样陡的角度停留。可是最深的湖，按它们的面积来说，并不像大多数人想象的那样深，如果把水抽干，也不会留下多么显眼的山谷。它们不像群山之间的杯子；因为这个湖，按它的面积来说已经深得出奇，可是从中心垂直剖开来看，也不比一只浅盘子更深。大多数湖，如果把水放干，留下的不过是一片草地，并不比我们常见的草地更凹。威廉·吉尔平在一切与风景有关的事情上都那么令人钦佩，通常也那么准确，他站在苏格兰法因湾的湾头——他描述它是“一个咸水的海湾，深六十或七十英寻，宽四英里”，长约五十英里，四周环绕着群山——说道：“如果我们能在洪水崩塌之后，或者在造成它的不管什么自然剧变之后，在海水涌进来以前，立刻看见它，它一定会显得是一道多么可怕的深渊啊！

“So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep, Capacious bed of waters.”

“那鼓胀的群山隆起多高，那空阔的谷底就陷落多低，又宽又深，成为容纳众水的巨床。”

But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we apply these proportions to Walden, which, as we have seen, appears already in a vertical section only like a shallow plate, it will appear four times as shallow. So much for the increased horrors of the chasm of Loch Fyne when emptied. No doubt many a smiling valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a “horrid chasm,” from which the waters have receded, though it requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact. Often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the plain have been necessary to conceal their history. But it is easiest, as they who work on the highways know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a shower. The amount of it is, the imagination give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of the ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared with its breadth.

可是，如果我们用法因湾最短的直径，把这些比例用到瓦尔登湖上——我们已经看到，瓦尔登湖从垂直剖面看来，已经只像一只浅盘子——它就会显得比那还要浅四倍。法因湾放干以后那道深渊增加的恐怖，不过如此而已。无疑，许多带着一望无际的玉米田、面带笑容的山谷，恰恰就占据着这样一道“可怕的深渊”，水已经从那里退去了，虽然需要地质学家的洞察力和远见，才能使毫不怀疑的居民们相信这个事实。一双好奇的眼睛，常常能在地平线上那些低矮的山丘中，看出一个原始湖泊的湖岸，而平原后来也无须抬升，就足以把它们的历史掩盖起来了。可是，正像修公路的人都知道的那样，最容易的办法，是在一场阵雨之后，根据水洼去找低洼的地方。总而言之，想象力只要给它一点点放纵，就会比大自然潜得更深，飞得更高。所以，海洋的深度，和它的宽度比起来，大概会被发现是微不足道的。

As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but the effect of water under these circumstances is to level all inequalities. The regularity of the bottom and its conformity to the shores and the range of the neighboring hills were so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite across the pond, and its direction could be determined by observing the opposite shore. Cape becomes bar, and plain shoal, and valley and gorge deep water and channel.

因为我是隔着冰测量的，我能够比测量那些不结冰的港口更准确地确定湖底的形状，我对湖底总体上的规则感到吃惊。在最深的地方，有好几英亩比几乎任何一块暴露在阳光、风和犁下的田地都更平坦。有一次，在一条随意选定的线上，三十杆之内深度的变化不超过一英尺；一般来说，在中心附近，我能够事先算出朝任何方向每一百英尺的变化，误差在三四英寸以内。有些人习惯于说，即使在像这样平静的沙底湖里，也有又深又危险的洞，可是在这样的条件下，水的作用是把一切不平都抹平。湖底的规则，以及它和湖岸、和附近山脉走向的吻合，是那样完美，一个远处的岬角在湖对面的测量数据中都暴露了出来，它的方向可以通过观察对岸来确定。岬角变成了沙洲，平原变成了浅滩，山谷和峡谷变成了深水和水道。

Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper water within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion of water within the land not only horizontally but vertically, and to form a basin or independent pond, the direction of the two capes showing the course of the bar. Every harbor on the seacoast, also, has its bar at its entrance. In proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider compared with its length, the water over the bar was deeper compared with that in the basin. Given, then, the length and breadth of the cove, and the character of the surrounding shore, and you have almost elements enough to make out a formula for all cases.

五个湖湾中，有三个，也就是所有测量过的那几个，都被发现在湾口横着一道沙洲，湾内的水更深，所以湖湾往往不仅在水平方向上，而且在垂直方向上，是水在陆地之内的一种扩展，形成一个水盆或一个独立的湖，两个岬角的方向标示出沙洲的走向。海岸上的每一个港口，入口处也都有它的沙洲。湖湾的口子比起它的长度越宽，沙洲上的水比起水盆里的水就越深。那么，只要知道了湖湾的长度和宽度，以及周围湖岸的特点，你就差不多有了足够的要素，可以得出一个适用于一切情况的公式了。

In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this experience, at the deepest point in a pond, by observing the outlines of a surface and the character of its shores alone, I made a plan of White Pond, which contains about forty-one acres, and, like this, has no island in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet; and as the line of greatest breadth fell very near the line of least breadth, where two opposite capes approached each other and two opposite bays receded, I ventured to mark a point a short distance from the latter line, but still on the line of greatest length, as the deepest. The deepest part was found to be within one hundred feet of this, still farther in the direction to which I had inclined, and was only one foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. Of course, a stream running through, or an island in the pond, would make the problem much more complicated.

为了看看有了这次经验以后，只凭观察水面的轮廓和湖岸的特点，我能把一个湖最深的地方猜得多准，我画了一张白湖的平面图。白湖大约有四十一英亩，和这个湖一样，湖中没有岛，也没有看得见的入水口和出水口；由于最宽的那条线非常接近最窄的那条线——在那里，两个相对的岬角彼此靠近，两个相对的湖湾向后退去——我就大胆地在离后一条线不远、但仍在最长的那条线上的地方，标出一个点，作为最深处。结果，最深处被发现就在离这一点不到一百英尺的地方，再往我原先倾向的那个方向偏一点，而且只深了一英尺，也就是六十英尺。当然，如果有一条溪流穿过湖，或者湖里有一个岛，问题就会复杂得多。

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveller, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.

如果我们知道了大自然所有的规律，我们只需要一个事实，或者对一个实际现象的描述，就可以推断出那一点上所有的具体结果。现在我们只知道少数几条规律，我们的结果就出了错，当然，不是因为大自然有什么混乱或不规则，而是因为我们对计算中一些基本要素的无知。我们关于规律与和谐的概念，通常局限于我们所发现的那些事例；可是，由许多看起来相互冲突、实际上却彼此协调的、我们还没有发现的规律所产生的和谐，还要奇妙得多。具体的规律就像我们的视点，正如对一个旅人来说，一座山的轮廓随着他的每一步而变化，它有无数个侧面，虽然它绝对地只有一个形状。即使把它劈开或者钻透，也不能理解它的全部。

What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draws lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man’s particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainous circumstances, an Achillean shore, whose peaks overshadow and are reflected in his bosom, they suggest a corresponding depth in him. But a low and smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. In our bodies, a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates a corresponding depth of thought. Also there is a bar across the entrance of our every cove, or particular inclination; each is our harbor for a season, in which we are detained and partially landlocked. These inclinations are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and direction are determined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes of elevation. When this bar is gradually increased by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence of the waters, so that it reaches to the surface, that which was at first but an inclination in the shore in which a thought was harbored becomes an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures its own conditions—changes, perhaps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a marsh. At the advent of each individual into this life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the surface somewhere? It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.

我对这个湖的观察，在伦理上也同样适用。这就是平均律。这样一条两条直径的规则，不仅引导我们找到太阳系中的太阳和人身上的心，而且，在一个人具体的日常行为和生活的波浪——直到他的湖湾和入口——的总和上，纵向和横向各画一条线，它们相交的地方，就是他品格的高度或深度。也许我们只需要知道他的湖岸是怎样延伸的，他周围的乡野或环境是怎样的，就能推断出他的深度和他隐藏着的湖底。如果他被山一样的环境所包围，有一道阿喀琉斯式的湖岸，它的峰峦遮蔽着他的胸怀，又倒映在他的胸怀里，那么它们就暗示着他身上相应的深度。可是一道低平的湖岸，就证明他在那一面是浅的。在我们的身体上，一个突出的、大胆的额头，会向下倾斜，并且表明有相应的思想深度。我们的每一个湖湾，或者说每一种特殊的倾向，入口处也都横着一道沙洲；每一个湖湾都是我们一季的港口，我们在里面被耽搁，部分地被陆地包围。这些倾向通常并不是一时的心血来潮，它们的形状、大小和方向，是由湖岸的岬角，由那些古老的隆起轴线决定的。当这道沙洲被风暴、潮汐或水流逐渐加高，或者水位下降，以至于沙洲露出水面的时候，那原先不过是湖岸的一个凹处、曾在其中停泊过一个思想的地方，就变成了一个独立的湖，与海洋隔绝，那个思想就在其中确立了它自己的条件——也许从咸变淡，变成一片甜海、一片死海，或者一片沼泽。在每一个人来到这个世界上的时候，我们难道不可以设想，在某个地方，有这样一道沙洲升到了水面上吗？确实，我们是这样拙劣的航海者，我们的思想大部分时间都在一道没有港口的海岸外面来回游弋，只熟悉诗歌海湾里的那些小湾，或者驶向公共的入境港口，进入科学的干船坞，在那里它们只是为了这个世界重新整修一番，没有任何自然的水流来协助它们形成个性。

As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not discovered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such places may be found, for where the water flows into the pond it will probably be coldest in summer and warmest in winter. When the icemen were at work here in ’46–7, the cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected by those who were stacking them up there, not being thick enough to lie side by side with the rest; and the cutters thus discovered that the ice over a small space was two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which made them think that there was an inlet there. They also showed me in another place what they thought was a “leach-hole,” through which the pond leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing me out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity under ten feet of water; but I think that I can warrant the pond not to need soldering till they find a worse leak than that. One has suggested, that if such a “leach-hole” should be found, its connection with the meadow, if any existed, might be proved by conveying some colored powder or sawdust to the mouth of the hole, and then putting a strainer over the spring in the meadow, which would catch some of the particles carried through by the current.

至于瓦尔登湖的入水口和出水口，除了雨、雪和蒸发，我还没有发现别的，虽然用一支温度计和一根测深绳，也许能找到这样的地方，因为水流进湖里的地方，夏天大概最冷，冬天大概最暖。四六年到四七年冬天，采冰人在这里干活的时候，有一天，运到岸上的冰块被岸上堆冰的人退了回来，因为它们不够厚，不能和其余的冰块并排放在一起；切冰的人这才发现，有一小块地方的冰比别处薄两三英寸，这使他们认为那里有一个入水口。他们还在另一个地方指给我看一个他们认为是“渗漏洞”的东西，湖水从那里漏出去，从一座小山下面流进附近的一片草地；他们把我推到一块冰上去看它。那是十英尺深的水下面的一个小洞；可是我想我可以担保，在他们找到比这更糟的漏洞以前，这个湖还用不着焊补。有人提出，如果找到了这样一个“渗漏洞”，要证明它和草地之间有没有联系，可以把一些有颜色的粉末或者锯末送到洞口，然后在草地上的泉眼上放一个滤网，水流带过去的一些微粒就会被它截住。

While I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen inches thick, undulated under a slight wind like water. It is well known that a level cannot be used on ice. At one rod from the shore its greatest fluctuation, when observed by means of a level on land directed toward a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters of an inch, though the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. It was probably greater in the middle. Who knows but if our instruments were delicate enough we might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth? When two legs of my level were on the shore and the third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a difference of several feet on a tree across the pond. When I began to cut holes for sounding there were three or four inches of water on the ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far; but the water began immediately to run into these holes, and continued to run for two days in deep streams, which wore away the ice on every side, and contributed essentially, if not mainly, to dry the surface of the pond; for, as the water ran in, it raised and floated the ice. This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship to let the water out. When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider’s web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre. Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside.

我测量的时候，十六英寸厚的冰在微风中像水一样起伏。大家都知道，在冰上是不能用水准仪的。在离岸一杆远的地方，我用放在陆地上的水准仪对准冰上的一根刻度标尺来观察，冰的最大起伏是四分之三英寸，虽然冰看上去牢牢地连在岸上。在湖中央，起伏大概还要更大。谁知道，如果我们的仪器足够精密，我们会不会测出地壳的起伏呢？当我的水准仪的两条腿放在岸上、第三条腿放在冰上，而视线越过冰面瞄准的时候，冰几乎无穷小的一点升降，就会使湖对面一棵树上的读数相差好几英尺。我开始凿洞测深的时候，在深深的积雪下面，冰上有三四英寸深的水，那是积雪把冰压下去这么多造成的；可是水立刻开始流进这些洞里，连续两天，像深深的溪流一样流着，把四周的冰都磨蚀掉了，并且在本质上，即使不是主要地，促使湖面变干了；因为水流进去的时候，就把冰抬了起来，让它浮着。这有点像在船底凿一个洞，好把水放出去。当这样的洞冻上，接着下了一场雨，最后新的冰冻又在整个湖面上结成一层新的光滑的冰时，冰的内部就布满了美丽的深色斑纹，形状有点像蜘蛛网，你可以把它们叫作冰的玫瑰花饰，那是水从四面八方流向一个中心时冲出的沟槽造成的。有时，当冰上积着浅浅的水洼的时候，我还看见我自己的两个影子，一个站在另一个的头上，一个在冰上，另一个在树上或山坡上。

While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically, wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January—wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink in the next. He cuts and saws the solid pond, unroofs the house of fishes, and carts off their very element and air, held fast by chains and stakes like corded wood, through the favoring winter air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the summer there. It looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it is drawn through the streets. These ice-cutters are a merry race, full of jest and sport, and when I went among them they were wont to invite me to saw pit-fashion with them, I standing underneath.

正当寒冷的一月，冰雪又厚又实的时候，一个精明的地主从村里来取冰，好在夏天冰镇他的饮料；他能在一月里就预见到七月的炎热和干渴，真是精明得令人印象深刻，甚至令人感动——穿着厚大衣，戴着连指手套！而许多事情却都没有预备。也许他在这个世界上并没有积攒下能在来世冰镇他夏天饮料的财宝。他切开、锯开坚实的湖，掀掉鱼儿们的屋顶，用车拉走它们赖以生存的元素和空气，那些冰用链条和木桩捆得牢牢的，像捆好的木柴一样，穿过适宜的冬日空气，运到冬天般寒冷的地窖里去，在那里垫在夏天的底下。远远望去，它被拉着穿过街道的时候，就像凝固了的蔚蓝色。这些切冰人是一群快活的人，满是笑话和玩闹，我到他们中间去的时候，他们常常邀我跟他们一起拉大锯，我站在下面。

In the winter of ’46–7 there came a hundred men of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many carloads of ungainly-looking farming tools—sleds, plows, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a double-pointed pikestaff, such as is not described in the New-England Farmer or the Cultivator. I did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that they meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentleman farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money, which, as I understood, amounted to half a million already; but in order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a hard winter. They went to work at once, plowing, harrowing, rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on making this a model farm; but when I was looking sharp to see what kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my side suddenly began to hook up the virgin mould itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the water—for it was a very springy soil—indeed all the terra firma there was—and haul it away on sleds, and then I guessed that they must be cutting peat in a bog. So they came and went every day, with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from and to some point of the polar regions, as it seemed to me, like a flock of arctic snowbirds. But sometimes Squaw Walden had her revenge, and a hired man, walking behind his team, slipped through a crack in the ground down toward Tartarus, and he who was so brave before suddenly became but the ninth part of a man, almost gave up his animal heat, and was glad to take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that there was some virtue in a stove; or sometimes the frozen soil took a piece of steel out of a plowshare, or a plow got set in the furrow and had to be cut out.

四六年到四七年冬天，一天早晨，有一百个极北之地血统的人猛扑到我们的湖上来，带着许多车样子笨拙的农具——雪橇、犁、条播机、草皮刀、铁锹、锯子、耙子，每个人还都带着一根双头尖的长矛，这是《新英格兰农夫》或《耕作者》上都没有描述过的。我不知道他们是来播种冬黑麦的，还是来种某种最近从冰岛引进的别的谷物。因为我没有看见肥料，我便判断他们打算像我一样，把土地浅浅地刮一层，以为这里的土壤很深，休耕得也够久了。他们说，有一位绅士农夫，躲在幕后，想把他的钱翻一番，据我了解，他的钱已经有五十万了；可是为了给他的每一块钱再盖上一块钱，他在严冬时节，剥去了瓦尔登湖唯一的一件外衣，不，是剥去了它的皮。他们立刻开始干活，犁地、耙地、碾地、开沟，秩序井然，令人钦佩，好像决心要把这里变成一座模范农场；可是正当我仔细看着，想知道他们往沟里撒的是什么种子的时候，我身边的一群家伙突然用一种奇特的猛拉，开始把那片处女地本身钩起来，一直钩到沙子，或者不如说是水——因为那是一片泉水很多的土地——事实上，是那里所有的坚实土地，然后用雪橇把它拖走，这时我才猜到，他们一定是在沼泽里切泥炭。就这样，他们每天来了又走，伴随着火车头一声奇特的尖叫，从北极地区的某个地方来，又回到那里去，在我看来，就像一群北极的雪鹀。可是有时，印第安女人瓦尔登也会报复，一个雇工走在他的牲口后面，从地上的一道裂缝里滑下去，朝着塔耳塔罗斯滑去，那个原先那么勇敢的人，突然变成了只有九分之一的人，几乎丧失了他的动物热，很高兴地到我的屋里来避难，承认火炉也有某种好处；或者有时，冻土从犁铧上啃下一块钢来，或者一把犁卡在犁沟里，只好把它凿出来。

To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee overseers, came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They divided it into cakes by methods too well known to require description, and these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They told me that in a good day they could get out a thousand tons, which was the yield of about one acre. Deep ruts and “cradle-holes” were worn in the ice, as on terra firma, by the passage of the sleds over the same track, and the horses invariably ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets. They stacked up the cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirty-five feet high on one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay between the outside layers to exclude the air; for when the wind, though never so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large cavities, leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and finally topple it down. At first it looked like a vast blue fort or Valhalla; but when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the crevices, and this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked like a venerable moss-grown and hoary ruin, built of azure-tinted marble, the abode of Winter, that old man we see in the almanac—his shanty, as if he had a design to estivate with us. They calculated that not twenty-five percent of this would reach its destination, and that two or three percent would be wasted in the cars. However, a still greater part of this heap had a different destiny from what was intended; for, either because the ice was found not to keep so well as was expected, containing more air than usual, or for some other reason, it never got to market. This heap, made in the winter of ’46–7 and estimated to contain ten thousand tons, was finally covered with hay and boards; and though it was unroofed the following July, and a part of it carried off, the rest remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next winter, and was not quite melted till September, 1848. Thus the pond recovered the greater part.

照字面上说，有一百个爱尔兰人，由北方佬监工带领，每天从剑桥来采冰。他们用一些人所共知、无须描述的方法把冰切成块，这些冰块用雪橇运到岸边，很快就被拖上一个冰台，再用马拉动的抓钩和滑轮组吊到一个冰垛上，就像吊起许多桶面粉一样稳当，在那里一块挨一块、一排压一排地整整齐齐码放起来，好像它们构成了一座要刺破云霄的方尖碑的坚实底座。他们告诉我，干得顺的一天，他们能采出一千吨冰，那大约是一英亩的产量。由于雪橇总在同一条路上来来往往，冰上也像坚实的陆地上一样，磨出了深深的车辙和“摇篮坑”，马总是从像水桶一样掏空了的冰块里吃燕麦。他们就这样把冰块露天码成一个垛子，一边高三十五英尺，六七杆见方，在外层之间塞上干草，好隔绝空气；因为风无论多么冷，只要找到一条通道吹进去，就会把它蚀出大洞来，只在这里那里留下一些细细的支撑或立柱，最后把它推倒。起初，它看上去像一座巨大的蓝色堡垒，或者瓦尔哈拉神殿；可是当他们开始把粗糙的草甸干草塞进缝隙里，干草上又盖满了白霜和冰柱的时候，它看上去就像一座古老的、长满青苔的、白发苍苍的废墟，用天蓝色的大理石砌成，是冬神的住所，就是我们在年历上看见的那个老人——这是他的棚屋，好像他打算同我们一起过夏天似的。他们估计，这些冰运到目的地的不会超过百分之二十五，还有百分之二三会在车厢里损耗掉。然而，这一大垛冰中还有更大的一部分，遭遇了和预想不同的命运；因为，或者是由于发现这些冰含的空气比平常多，不如预期的那样耐储存，或者是由于别的原因，它始终没有运到市场上去。这一垛冰是四六年到四七年冬天码起来的，估计有一万吨，最后用干草和木板盖了起来；虽然第二年七月掀开了顶，运走了一部分，其余的暴露在阳光下，它却挺过了那个夏天和下一个冬天，直到1848年9月才完全融化。这样，湖收回了它的大部分。

Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the implements of farming, such a picture as we see on the first page of the almanac; and as often as I looked out I was reminded of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower, and the like; and now they are all gone, and in thirty days more, probably, I shall look from the same window on the pure sea-green Walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in the waves, where lately a hundred men securely labored.

就这样，一连十六天，我从窗口看见一百个人像忙碌的农夫一样干活，带着牲口和马匹，显然还带着所有的农具，那样的画面，我们在年历的第一页上见过；我每次向外望，都会想起云雀与收割者的寓言，或者撒种的比喻，诸如此类；现在他们都走了，再过三十天，大概，我就会从同一扇窗口望见那里纯净的、海绿色的瓦尔登湖水，映着云和树，在孤寂中升腾着它的水汽，看不出曾有人在那里站过的任何痕迹。也许我会听见一只孤独的潜鸟一边潜水、一边梳理羽毛，一边大笑；或者看见一个孤单的渔人坐在他的船里，像一片漂浮的叶子，凝视着自己映在波浪里的身影，而就在不久前，有一百个人在那里安安稳稳地劳作。

Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names.

由此看来，查尔斯顿和新奥尔良、马德拉斯、孟买和加尔各答那些热得汗流浃背的居民，都在喝我的井里的水。早晨，我把我的心智沐浴在《薄伽梵歌》那博大的、讲述宇宙起源的哲学里，自它写成以来，已经过去了诸神的许多年岁，与它相比，我们的现代世界和它的文学显得渺小而琐碎；我甚至怀疑，那种哲学是否该归于一种前世的存在，它的崇高离我们的观念是那样遥远。我放下书，到我的井边去打水，看哪！我在那里遇见了婆罗门的仆人，那婆罗门是梵天、毗湿奴和因陀罗的祭司，他仍坐在恒河边的神庙里诵读《吠陀》，或者带着他的面包皮和水罐住在一棵树的树根旁。我遇见他的仆人来为主人打水，我们的水桶仿佛在同一口井里碰在了一起。纯净的瓦尔登湖水，与恒河的圣水交融在一起。借着顺风，它漂过传说中的亚特兰蒂斯和赫斯珀里得斯群岛的旧址，走过汉诺的环航之路，漂过特尔纳特和蒂多雷，漂过波斯湾的入口，在印度洋热带的大风中融化，在连亚历山大也只听说过名字的港口登岸。