THE PONDS. 
197 
part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen 
years hence the water will again be as low as I have 
ever known it. Flints’ Pond, a mile eastward, allowing 
for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, 
and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize 
with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height 
at the same time with the latter. The same is true, as 
far as my observation goes, of White Pond. 
This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves 
this use at least; the water standing at this great height 
for a year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk 
round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung 
up about its edge since the last rise, pitch-pines, birches, 
alders, aspens, and others, and, falling again, leaves an 
unobstructed shore; for, unlike many ponds and all wa¬ 
ters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is clean¬ 
est when the water is lowest. On the side of the pond 
next my house, a row of pitch pines fifteen feet high has 
been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a 
stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates 
how many years have elapsed since the last rise to this 
height. By this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to 
a shore, and thus the shore is shorn , and the trees can¬ 
not hold it by right of possession. These are the lips 
of the lake on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps 
from time to time. When the water is at its height, the 
alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass of fibrous 
red roots several feet long from all sides of their stems 
in the water, and to the height of three or four feet 
from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves; 
and I have known the high-blueberry bushes about the 
shore, which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abun¬ 
dant crop under these circumstances. 
