With the coming of April, the ice begins to melt from Walden Pond, creating a thunderous roar in which Thoreau delights. Thoreau mentions an old man he knows—whose wisdom, Thoreau says, he could not rival if he lived to be as old as Methuselah—who was struck with terror by the crash of the melting ice despite his long experience with the ways of nature. Thoreau describes it as a kind of universal meltdown, heralding total change. The sand moves with the flowing rivulets of water. Buds and leaves appear. Wild geese fly overhead, trumpeting through the heavens. Thoreau feels that old grudges should be abandoned and old sins forgiven in this time of renewed life. Inspired by the arrival of good weather, Thoreau takes to fishing again. He admires a graceful, solitary hawk circling overhead. He senses the throb of universal life and spiritual upheaval, and meditates that death in such an atmosphere can have no sting. His mission completed, Thoreau leaves Walden Pond on September 6, 1847.
