Every quoted line is Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), verbatim — from The Pond in Winter for the survey, Brute Neighbors for the loon, and Solitude for the last of them. The green lines are mine.

The pond is a reconstruction of his chart, not a tracing of it: an outline of five coves, each given a bar across its mouth and deeper water within, because that is what he found when he sounded them. Depths run to one hundred and two feet at the point where the line of greatest length crosses the line of greatest breadth — his coincidence, which the geometry here is built to keep.

The loon is not following a path I drew. Each time it goes under it picks where to come up by the rule he wrote down: the widest expanse of water, at the greatest distance from the boat. Henry guesses by reading its last heading, which is a reasonable thing to do and the wrong kind of reasonable. The red crosses are where he guessed. The pale curves are the route it took, drawn only once it has surfaced, because that is the only moment anyone learns them.

It is silent. His looning was “perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here”, and a recording of it would be the one thing here not made out of the pond.

Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 205. One canvas, no libraries.
Type: EB Garamond & IBM Plex Mono.