《瓦尔登湖·第十七章·春天·Spring》第3节
One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honey-combed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel’s chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honey-combed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in ’46, the 25th of March; in ’47, the 8th of April; in ’51, the 28th of March; in ’52, the 18th of April; in ’53, the 23d of March; in ’54, about the 7th of April.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里把“来看春天降临”列为隐居树林的一个明确动机。这不是事后追加的说辞——他在开篇不久就提过，自己选择七月四日搬进小屋，本身就是一个象征性的独立宣言，但住下来的真正回报之一，是可以不受打扰地目睹一整轮季节转换。这一段写得克制而具体：冰变成蜂巢状，脚跟能踩进去；雾气、雨水和日渐温暖的阳光消融积雪；白天明显变长，以至于他意识到不必再往柴堆添木柴。这些…