If the reader wonders how the narrator finds the "company" of nature superior to human company, consider Thoreau's view of nature. Thoreau saw it as both a tremendous source of sensual pleasure, capable of revitalizing the physical man in him, and as the medium through which the spiritual world might be experienced. To him, it was literally a "perennial source of life," physical and spiritual. To be in harmony with nature meant to be physically and spiritually whole. Thoreau seemed to find human company incapable of stimulating him to such a feeling of wholeness; hence, it was judged inferior to nature.
The stimulation received from a solitary relationship with nature is described with metaphors of rebirth and renewal. The narrator claims that he was no more lonely than a loon (he undergoes an annual molting, a sign of renewal) or a January thaw (signifying movement out of a wintry, lifeless spiritual state). We should note the pun when the narrator significantly states, "I find it wholesome to be alone."
When the narrator states that he is no more lonely than Walden Pond, he introduces a new metaphoric sequence of Walden. The pond is later developed as a metaphor for the narrator's purified and perfected soul.
