Ponds

One thing I gathered from Henry David Thoreau’s The Ponds is how descriptive he was about the most minute of things. Thoreau obviously admired his pond very much. Maybe even a little obsessively, but then again he wrote this in the 1800s so I guess people back then appreciated such scenery a lot more then we do in these days.

I thought one line in particular was a little strange, in my opinion. “I have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both water and ice were almost as green as grass.” I can see the water being green, but not the ice. Even if the water is a little green I still can’t see the ice being green as well. “Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both.” I really like that line.

I like the way Thoreau describes the scene of his ax sliding across the ice into the hole. “…as if some evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the holes…” I like the way he added the evil genius part, it makes an event such as an ax sliding across a frozen pond more easy to visualize than if he had said it like this: and my ax slid four or five rods into an open hole in the ice. That’s probably the way I would put it, very boring. Since I am majoring in journalism I really need to learn how to be more descriptive of things. When you told us to describe our room, all I did was the bare minimum. I can do better than that. I think I just need more time to think about it. I can be very descriptive if you let me write about something that I create. Essays are not my forte since I tend to ramble; I prefer short stories and creative writing. If I can learn to draw out as much content from something like a boring pond in the way Thoreau did, I think I’ll be okay. I’ve got a lot of strange and bizarre short stories floating around in my head,