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At some point during my high school years I was presented with a copy of On Walden Pond by an enterprising english teacher (actually one of the two best teachers I ever had the luck to study with) who struggled to get us to think about what Thoreau said and how his ideas related to our own lives. Of course, we didn't believe that we had any point of reference to understanding Thoreau and none of us believed that we'd give him a second thought once the book was shelved for good. I have to admit that I was one of the chief offenders,

Follow up:

but I did find a couple of quotes within the pages that for some reason stood out to me and which I thought would make me appear to be insightful and thoughtful if used in my senior yearbook snippet and there they have reposed for years...printed under the photo of a starry eyed teenager who had no doubt that her life would proceed in a systematic escalation of small and large accomplishments just as it had for the previous eighteen years. At the time, if you'd asked me if I'd still go back to them thirty five years later I would probably have answered with a resounding NO! And yet...thanks to the genius of an extraordinary teacher...here I am still contemplating these eerily phrophetic phrases and understanding them more each day when viewed through the ever thicker prism of my life.

"It was a lake of rainbow [colored] light in which, for a short while I lived like a dolphin." Well, it does sound like a yearbook quotation! I have to admit that I giggled just now when I Googled the quotation to make sure I was remembering it correctly and came upon a Google Book Search Entry for an annotated version by Jeffrey S. Cramer. He goes off into a long, literal discussion of observations that Thoreau made in his notebooks and talks about physical rainbow phenomena and the fact that what Thoreau seems to describe could not in fact have happened. But, is this annotation necessary? Like a college professor who nearly failed me for arguing over the meaning of a passage in The Scarlet Letter and he afterall knew what Hawthorne meant to say (while he seemed ancient enough to have known Hawthorne I sincerely doubt they ever discussed this passage's meaning) Cramer should not be presuming to "know" what Thoreau was describing for the experience was tinged by his own esthetic interpretation. The passage is meant to describe the moment of observation for those of us who were not there to witness and to take meaning from the fabric of our own imagination. Could the passage be as simple as I see it? As a metaphor for life. Could it simply mean that life is a gift of moments of many varied experiences through which we can frolic with the joy of the dolphins who dance in the sea?

I will never know what Thoreau was thinking nor would I want to for this passage has become very personal to me and evolved into the way that I view life. I would not want that to change.