7.30.2025 – light mixed with it

light mixed with it
look with divided vision
see the reflection

Adapted from:

All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand.

The first depends more on the light, and follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark slate color.

The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the atmosphere.

I have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both water and ice were almost as green as grass.

Some consider blue “to be the color of pure water, whether liquid or solid.”

But, looking directly down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different colors.

Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view.

Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both.

Viewed from a hill-top it reflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond.

Like the rest of our waters, when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in comparison.

From Walden or, Life in the Woods, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, (Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston and ; New York , 1897 Edition).