While roaming the countryside, Thoreau is enraptured by the beauty of the landscape. He travels of the drap, dismal hut of John Field, an Irish immigrant and common laborer. John is a bogger who works from sunrise to sunset. He and his wife work long hours but dream of improving their conditions one day but for now they concentrate on making ends meet. Thoreau to help the Fields by explaining his methods of economy and how they can make life more enjoyable but with no success. John Fields explains that they came to American because of the luxuries he could not get in Ireland. Thoreau realizes that the Fields are in a vicious circle and will probably remain so and gives up trying to convince them of their self-destructive state. Thoreau returns to his concerns for his own happy life.
He expresses exuberance as he "ran down the hill toward the reddening west….determined to enjoy the land, but own it not.” For him life will be an adventure; he refuses to be penned into the dull round of conventional living like those who live like the Fields.
The chapter reflects Thoreau’s sense of spirituality. He expresses his happiness, stating: “Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow’s arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through coloured crystal. It was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin.”
Thoreau describes his sublime contentment in three ways:
-he stood at the rainbow’s end and was thus the lucky mortal who found the “pot of gold”
-being flooded in resplendent light symbolizes an experience of spiritual illumination
-he compares himself to a dolphin, which is a traditional symbol of immortality
He makes sure that readers are aware of his spiritual state by declaring, “As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect.”
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