Winthrop Packard

Literary Pilgrimages of a Naturalist Winthrop Packard

"He who would know Thoreau's Walden will do well to bathe in it. His first plunge may well be in Thoreau's story of the pond and his life on its bank, and when he comes dripping from this and puts on the garments of everyday life he still must feel a little of the glow of the fire with which this alchemist of the woods transmuted all things, showing us how rough granite, hard iron and base lead are gold. Thoreau lived on the borders of the little clear pond but two years... But his spirit had birth in something akin to its pure, profound waters and dwells above them now for all centuries. ... Here is a crater of glacier-crushed granite, out of which never came smoke nor lava, only a white fire from unexplored depths, a fire of cool austerity which burns the dross out of all that may be put into it. Its waters well up from a mysterious source within the very earth. Their outflow is equally invisible...."