Ponds impound more than water

Everyone likes a swimming pond.

A couple of willows weep majestically. Spring Peepers put on their heavy-metal show at night, keeping the old folks up and giving the young ones the wrong idea. It’s a slowed-down place where cell phones should be banned, and no one yells at the dogs when they get filthy.

Nothing is better after a long day of trimming hedges or trading them than jumping in. The deeper down, the colder and lonelier it is, which is like a lot of things in life.

Ponds are smaller than lakes. In most places, a pond is fewer than five or ten acres.

In curmudgeonly New England, many lakes are called ponds. The most famous is Walden’s 61 acres in Concord, Ma., where Henry David Thoreau camped out about two miles from his Mom’s kitchen. New England is also the place where seashore mansions are called cottages, and old fortunes are not called anything at all.

Ponds confine water. This happens in natural holes, like those left by glaciers as they fled north taking tons of souvenir rocks with them, or by building a dam that impounds water. All dams fail eventually. Read more »