Chapter 17 Summary

The second to last chapter of Walden marks the end of the year cycle that Thoreau incorporates into the text. "Spring," following a series of chapters that have contained many references and illusions to winter, opens with a description of thawing ice and snow.

The opening of Walden Pond, Thoreau mentions, was usually around the beginning of April. The thawing of the ice and snow becomes important to the central theme regarding scales and proportions, "the phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on as small scale," which supports Thoreau's suggestion in the previous chapter that the foreign, the unfamiliar, or the distant is, in fact, no less remarkable and valuable than the familiar and local. Thoreau offers one particular reason that he moved to Walden Pond, which was to have the time and opportunity to witness the spring...