Taken
aback as I was by this warbling I had however heard a loon! And
courtesy of the radio too. No waiting out in woods or by ponds to
capture it. I would have had a long wait had I tried for I reside in
Old England, where of woods and ponds though there be plenty of loons
there are not. And anyway, loons, judging by Thoreau's noted
experience, seem devilish characters, of the classic cartoon variety
where their laugh is the last and loudest.
Thoreau's
pursuit of the loon has provoked, so it seems, much analysis. The
bird symbolises purification and rebirth; it represents what Thoreau
is searching for: to reach a unity with nature and likewise separate
himself from society. I have to confess I didn't see it quite like
that, nor did I probe this passage or any of Walden,
really, that deeply. I took this passage at face value, as what
Thoreau himself said it was: 'a pretty game... a man against a loon.'
No more. Perhaps I've read too many other examples of man outwitted
by birds and beasts, and so this didn't strike me as being
representative of any deeper meaning. Why does it have to have one?
I
wondered then how the war between the red and black ants was
dissected, but didn't dare research further, for it would only spoil
my remembrance of that section. The battle, as unfolded by Thoreau's
masterful prose, had shades of, and was as good as the Iliad
in condensed form. Only one who was well-read and knew his history
could have written so eloquently, could have drawn you in and pulled
you along with the action, the futility and the destructiveness of it
all, and yet made you yearn, however rightly or wrongly, for the ant
contest not to end, for the words at least to go on.
And
go on they do with other matters relating to nature, both man and
creature, whilst earlier chapters still echo, particularly that of
Sounds with its screech
owls that sigh and reply Oh-o-o-o-o
that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n!
In
his conclusion Thoreau remarks '...how easily and insensibly we fall
into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.' My
mind keeps returning to Walden,
having read it only once. It took Thoreau a week for a route to be
established, it took my mind two. His 'feet wore a path from the door
[of his hut] to the pond-side'; my imagination dug a permanent course
to Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts.
This
path Thoreau could still recall five to six years after he had re-joined civilisation, as if his mind had never left, or a part of
his soul had stayed behind.
When
time hangs heavy men build, sometimes castles in the air, sometimes
huts in woods.
Picture credit: Pond in the Wood, c1496, Albrecht Durer (source: WikiArt).
Written December 2020.
