Walden [?w?ld?n] (Issue 184) 15. Winter Animals (1) WHEN THE PONDS were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint's Pond, after it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, or Esquimaux[eskw?'m??z], or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing no house between my own hut and the lecture room. In Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, (Above: muskrat lodge in winter) though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where I could walk freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were confined to their streets. There, far from the village street, and except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid[sl?d] and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling[?br?sl??] with icicles. 當(dāng)那些湖被牢牢地凍住，它們不僅向我提供了去許多地方更短的新路線，而且還有從它們的表面看周圍熟悉風(fēng)景的新視野。當(dāng)我穿過弗林特湖，在它白雪覆蓋，雖然我曾經(jīng)常在其中劃船和掠過水面，它對于我來說還是預(yù)料之外的遼闊和陌生，除了想到巴芬灣再也想不到別的什么。林肯山在我的四周升起來是高高隆起的雪原，我不記得曾在其中站過；而那些漁人在冰上一個(gè)無法確定的距離，和他們的狼狗緩緩移動，是經(jīng)過的獵海豹人，或愛斯基摩人，或像傳說中的動物在霧里若隱若現(xiàn)，而我也不知道他們是巨人還是侏儒。當(dāng)我晚上去林肯鎮(zhèn)講演就走的是這路線，在我的小屋和講演廳之間沒有道路也不經(jīng)過房舍[shè]。在鵝湖，橫亙[gèn]于我和目的地之間，那里是麝香鼠的領(lǐng)地，在冰上高高筑起了他們的小屋，雖然在我從旁經(jīng)過的時(shí)候沒看到一只在外面活動。瓦爾登湖，和這其他的湖一樣也通常光禿禿滿是雪，或僅有淺灘和不規(guī)則的漂浮物居于其上；那里是我的院子，我可以自由地散步；當(dāng)其他地方雪的平均深度達(dá)到約兩英尺，而村民們也都被限制在他們的街道上。在那里，遠(yuǎn)離村子，除了長時(shí)間的間隔傳來雪橇的鈴聲，我下滑和滑行，就像在一個(gè)寬敞[chang]的被麋鹿腳踏實(shí)了的庭院，頭頂是橡樹林和莊嚴(yán)的松林，它們一律被雪壓得彎著腰或枝條布滿冰凌[líng]。