阿羅漢的神通

As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil. When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. The nighthawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons — for I sometimes made a day of it — like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in nature. The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descending, approaching, and leaving one another, as if they were the embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and outlandish spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers.

梭羅說他在華爾騰湖旁的高地種了兩英畝半，每行田畦長15杆，總長加起來是7英哩的豆田。

1杆是16.5英呎，16.5×15=247.5英呎。(每行田畦長度)
1英哩是5,280英呎，5280×7=36,960英呎。(田畦總長度)
36960÷247.5=149.3，所以梭羅大概種了150行田畦的豆田。

一英畝是43,560平方英呎，
2.5英畝則是43560×2.5=108,900平方英呎。(田畦總面積)
108900÷247.5=440英呎(田畦總寛度)，
440÷150=2.9英呎，所以每行田畦有大約3英呎寬。
一英呎約等於30公分。

《法句經》有：

如鴈將群　　避羅高翔　　明人導世　　度脫邪眾

這一偈說的是透過修行，人可以橫越天空、凌水而過，遁入地中等。這些能力是精神的、超越自然的，但絕不是奇蹟。梭羅說他在鋤豆田時看到一對鷂鷹在天空飛翔，一會盤旋而上，一會俯衝而下，互相接近而又遠離，正如他思想的化身。有時，我真的覺得透過梭羅的文字，我腳下的不是磨石子地板，而是踩在華爾騰湖旁，清晨露濕的豆田上。