A Pilgrim’s Digression

After some debate about how we wanted to spend our last days of vacation, we finally decided to stay in Concord and visit some of the sites we missed the first day: the North Bridge, the Old Manse, and the historical centers/museums of both Concord and Lexington.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately since it lent the pictures I took an unusually gloomy atmosphere, it rained heavily all morning. So we decided to take the bus tour that travels from the historical center in Lexington to the North Bridge in Concord and back again. It essentially follows the route that Paul Revere and his fellow ‘alarmists’ took when riding to Concord to warn the militia there that the British regulars were on the march.

The tour was actually quite good and worth the money, the guide giving a rather gripping account of the events on that April night leading up to the battles of the next day that began the Revolution. Lynn’s Mom remarked that she would like to have the guide’s narration on CD so that she could listen to it again at her leisure, but somehow I don’t think it would be the same, listening to it in the car, as listening to it as we stopped along the road and the guide pointed out the sites as she told her story.

The North Bridge and the Old Manse were probably the highlights of the tour, for me at least. We came back to the Old Manse later in the day, after the rain had stopped, for a complete tour of the house and grounds. Following are some pictures I took of the North Bridge earlier in the day, when it was raining, and later in the day after it had stopped. I am going to include thumbnails with a link to the full size image, because I really think you need to see these pictures at full resolution to appreciate the sites we saw.

Below: The tour guide leading us on to the North Bridge during the downpour.

Below: the boat house of the Old Manse, taken from the North Bridge. You can see how hard it is pouring.

Below: the Minute Man statue on the far side of the North Bridge.

Below: a quote from a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem on the battle of Lexington and Concord. Inscribed on the Minute Man Statue, Concord, Mass.

Below: the Old Manse. In 1775, it was the home of Rev. William Emerson, Ralph Waldo’s grandfather. It stands on the banks of the river and from a rear, upstairs window, Emerson’s grandparents watched the battle of the bridge unfold.

The Old Manse was probably the highlight of this trip for me, even more so than the Twain house. Someone has asked if I expected to see such literary sites when I set out on this trip, and the answer is no, I did not. I expected to visit the Twain house, but I had forgotten how much literary history existed in Concord. It has been a total fluke that I ended up in the heart of literary New England. We could have stayed anywhere in Massachussetts and seen many of these destinations, but the fact that we ended up staying in Concord has made it possible to see many of the sites we probably would have skipped, otherwise.

The Old Manse, though, is a real treasure. It figures in so many ways into the history, literary and otherwise, of this country. Not only is it an Emerson home, but the Hawthorne’s rented it for several years after their marriage, as well. It is the setting for Hawthorne’s novel Mosses from an Old Manse, and Hawthorne considered the years he spent there the happiest of his life.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing is to see the inscriptions in the window panes in the upstairs study where Hawthorne worked. He and his wife carved loving messages to one another in the window glass, using her diamond ring, and those messages are still visible today…including Hawthorne’s ’signature.’ The house is truly incredible.

Below: on the left is the window from which Emerson’s grandparents watched the battle of the Old North Bridge unfold. On the right, the window used by the Hawthorne’s as a “message board.”

Finally, this picture is the one of Lynn and I that I like best. It was taken at the museum in Lexington, Massachusetts.

It has been a truly remarkable vacation, perhaps one of the best we have ever taken. We are already planning a return trip with Brendan, once he is old enough to appreciate the history of what he is viewing. I highly recommend a trip to Lexington and Concord, and Boston, too, to anyone who hasn’t made the journey yet. I would recommend staying in the Concord and Lexington area and making perhaps a single trip into Boston.

I have always thought of myself as a city person, but Boston really wore me out. That could have been in part the way we “did” Boston, though. I don’t like to feel rushed or held to a schedule, and our one day in Boston was really the only day of the entire trip where we were held to such a schedule. If I had felt more free to do what I wanted, when I wanted, I probably would have enjoyed it more, and the nastiness of the people, the crowds, and the heat probably would not have exhausted me so much.

Concord was really great, however. It is crowded, too, and the restaurants are pricey. It’s hard to find a chain restaurant in that entire area of Mass., but we drove around enough that we found plenty of places to go for a decent and not so expensive meal. Friendlys (sp?) is the Mass. equivalent of other ‘family’ chain restaurants across the country, and we ate there a couple times. Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts are also plentiful. As our tour guide in Boston told us, the reason there are so many Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts in Boston is that the citizens want to always know where their policemen are at all times.

Tomorrow, we drive back to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; it’s a little more than a day trip, so we are spending the night in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, again. Th, on Saturday we return to Virginia. It’s been quite a trip, and I may yet have more to write about it. But for now, this is the end for a bit.