“Walden was dead and is alive again.” Imagine traveling back in time to Walden Pond in early spring of the mid-nineteenth century. Every part of the beautiful landscape has been blanketed in snow and ice, until the arrival of spring. Thoreau sets up vivid imagery from the quickly melting pond to the warbling of the sparrows to signify the blossoming of the new season. Throughout chapter seventeen we will make the connection between the rebirth of nature and the rebirth of man. Thoreau personifies Walden Pond when he writes, “it stretched itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult.” The pond has essentially been “asleep” during the lengthy winter. Walden Pond, one of Thoreau’s favorite symbols to use throughout the novel, gradually begins to thaw. He notes the sun’s warming rays and the warm winds that help defrost and bring new life to Walden Pond. Thoreau also receives great delight from the observations he makes when watching clay and sand stream down the railroad bank. With this observation, it seems as if Thoreau is viewing the flowing of clay as nature’s sign of awakening. He writes, “the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen…show more content… Thoreau’s spirit is reinvigorated with the revival of the wildlife and nature’s natural beauty within and surrounding the pond. He ponders about life in statements such as, “ We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befalls us.” Why shouldn’t we as humans take advantage of all life has to offer and always live in the present rather than the past? He goes on to use an example of a despised corrupt neighbor who is re-created just as the beginnings of spring does to the earth. While you once would have “pitied or despised him” you now will forgive him for all his wrongdoings and