The Pond Will Tell You Who You Are

Fill a bottle at Walden Pond: the water goes colorless in your hand. Whatever the pond has, it will not travel; you have to stand in front of it. This is The Ponds, the chapter where Kaag thinks the book quietly becomes a religious one, though the shrine sits on a humble scale. Six weeks after bypass surgery he tried to swim across it, in April water, and the pond delivered its verdict on him. He will let it tell you. The episode ends at Walden as it is now: the buses, the posted rules, one disobeyed lifeguard, and the question of what all those seekers have come looking for.