人間四月天

At length the winter set in good earnest, just as I had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had permission to do so till then. Night after night the geese came lumbering in the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was covered with snow, some to alight in Walden, and some flying low over the woods toward Fair Haven, bound for Mexico. Several times, when returning from the village at ten or eleven o'clock at night, I heard the tread of a flock of geese, or else ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind my dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and the faint honk or quack of their leader as they hurried off. In 1845 Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night of the 22d of December, Flint's and other shallower ponds and the river having been frozen ten days or more; in '46, the 16th; in '49, about the 31st; and in '50, about the 27th of December; in '52, the 5th of January; in '53, the 31st of December. The snow had already covered the ground since the 25th of November, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed.

從這段文字可以看出，梭羅一直到1853年，即本書初版的前一年，仍在修改書中的內容。而他是在付梓九年前，即1845年三月就開始他的實驗的。根據後人研究，本書的初稿，寫於梭羅在湖邊生活的兩年間，而其份量不到成書時的二分之一。所以有些學者認為本書不過是一本散文小說。從 Brute Neighbors 之後的幾章到 Spring 之前有關冬天的部份都是在1851年後才寫就的。

現在已經是春天，我決定暫時將冬天的部份跳過，直接從 Spring 讀起。這樣也許更貼近梭羅的實驗。