Walden

the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself
so much the more important. From a hill top near by, where the wood had
been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the
pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore
there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a
stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but
stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near
green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with
blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of
the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the
north-west, those true-blue coins from heaven’s own mint, and also of
some portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this
point, I could not see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me. It
is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to
and float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is, that when
you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular. This
is as important as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the