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38. X Marks Walden's Depth
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recto runningfoot 149 3 8 . X M a r k s W a l d e n ’ s D e p t h During the winter of 1846, Thoreau mapped Walden Pond, partly to disprove the local myth of its “bottomlessness.” Lying on the ice and taking soundings with a small stone and cod line, Thoreau produced surprisingly accurate measurements that revealed the water’s actual depth: 102 feet. He also observed what he calls “this remarkable coincidence,” which he drew on a map, “that the line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth” (195). After leaving the woods, Thoreau would caution himself against ready generalizations: “Let me not be in haste to detect the universal law; let me see more clearly a particular instance of it!” (J, 25 December 1851). But in “The Pond in Winter,” he is quickly off to the races. Proud of his X, he begins to speculate: Who knows but this hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as of a pond or puddle? Is not this the rule also for the height of mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys? (195) This question prompts a paleontological surmise worthy of Sherlock Holmes: “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” (195). And he can’t stop there, darting off restlessly on one of Walden’s most obscure flights: 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 X 150 verso runningfoot toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draw 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 and depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depths and concealed bottom. (196) Even a reader sympathetic to Thoreau will probably lose patience with this passage, the result of an unchecked metaphor. But it is also characteristic of Walden and what makes the book so inspiring : Thoreau’s consistent willingness to put pressure on every chance and coincidence he detects, trying to see where they might lead. “We should be blessed if we lived in the present always,” he advises in “Spring,” “and took advantage of every accident that befell us” (211). Having a particularly vivid reverie interrupted by Channing’s visit, Thoreau offers one of Walden’s secrets: “Mem. There never is but one opportunity of a kind.” In the X of the Pond’s map, he has seen an “opportunity.” The French surrealists would base an entire movement on this way of working. In Nadja, André Breton would articulate the formula: I intend to mention in the margin of the narrative I have yet to relate, only the most decisive episodes of my life as I can conceive it apart from its organic plan, and only insofar as it is at the mercy of chance . . . temporarily escaping my control, admitting me to an almost forbidden world of sudden parallels, petrifying coincidences . . . flashes of light that would make you see, really see, if only they were not so much quicker than all the rest. I am concerned with facts of quite unverifiable intrinsic value, but which, by their absolutely unexpected, violently fortuitous character, and the kind of associations of suspect ideas they provoke . . . I am concerned, I say, with facts which may belong to the order of pure observation, but which on each occasion present all the appearances of a signal, without our being able to say precisely which signal, and of what. Thoreau had been there before, speaking the same urgent language: 150 x [44.200.249.42] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:06 GMT) recto runningfoot 151 I saw the sun falling on a distant white pine wood. . . . It was like looking into dreamland. It is one of the avenues to my future. Certain coincidences like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy lightning, flooding all the world with a tremulous serene light which it is difficult to see long at a time. (J, 21 November 1850). Breton...