he end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe a down to
the woods by Walden Pond, o where I inteo build my
house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in
their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without
borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit
your fellow-men to have an i in your enterprise. The owner
of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the
apple of his eye; but I retur sharper than I received it. It
leasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods,
through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in
the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The i
the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces,
and it was all dark-colored and saturated with water. There were
some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there;
but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way
home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy
atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the
lark and pewee and other birds already e to enother year
with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of
mans distent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that
had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe had
e off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with
a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond-hole in order to
swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay
otom, apparently without invenience, as long as I stayed
there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not
yet fairly e out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for
a like reason men remain in their present lorimitive
dition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of
springs arousing them, they would of y rise to a higher and
more ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty
ms in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and
inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. O of April
it rained aed the ice, and in the early part of the day,
which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the
pond and cag as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog.
So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also
studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many
unicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself, --
Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings --
The arts and sces,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.
I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on
two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side,
leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight
and much strohan sawed ones. Each stick was carefully
mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by
this time. My days in the woods were not very long ones; yet I
usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, ahe
neer in which it was ed, at noon, sitting amid the green
pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was imparted some
of their fragrance, fo