In considering this chapter, the first thing the reader should note is the similarity between the image of the narrator at the beginning of the chapter and that at the end. At the beginning, he described the poet — himself — who had the ability to "skim off," from the landscape that which was of value to his soul. He did not buy the Hollowell farm, but he did retain in his mind the landscape; "and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow." At the end of the chapter, we find him mining reality, digging out of life those values that make him complete. Throughout Walden, we will see the narrator acting thus: approaching books, animals, sounds, and all the aspects of life in terms of their value to his process of self-growth. In effect, anything in the world exists for the sake of what it can contribute to his quest for perfection. As he states midway in this chapter, "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."
This chapter dramatically illustrates the success of the narrator's attempt at "mining," "skimming off," and "sucking out" that which is of spiritual value. As in "Economy," the narrator's growing state of inspiration is signaled by the songs of birds; again Thoreau's special symbol of inspiration appears as "the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore." As the narrator bathes in the pond, we discover still other symbols of spiritual purification, that of water and the religious ceremony of baptism. The narrator is careful to make this allusion clear: "I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did." That this symbolic action takes place in the morning is also significant. As the new day is born, the narrator believes that with each dawn a new life begins for him: "Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me." The narrator believes that he daily moves further out of the spiritually asleep state that he once shared with the majority of men, the "sleepers." He is no longer like the half-thawed snake of "Economy" that slumbered on the bottom of Walden Pond.
