As I posted on Facebook last Saturday, "If I had to leave Seattle, I could survive in Boston." I was half way through a brief -- four days, including air travel -- visit to the Boston area, a trip that was living up to all my expectations. I find that I feel comfortable and at home in Boston (as a tourist at least) -- more than I might in many other American destinations.
I stayed in the same Cambridge inn (bed & breakfast) as on past visits. Only a couple of blocks from Harvard Yard, which I crossed frequently on my way to and from the Harvard subway stop. Each crossing giving me a reason to wish again that I were still a bright eyed and bushy tailed college student. Or even a tired and exhausted one.
The only real pre-planned portion of my visit was a visit to Concord -- an expedition similar to my side trip to Salem at exactly the same time of year in 2018. Massachusetts Bay Transit (MBTA), which runs the buses and subways in Boston, also runs commuter trains to outlying suburbs. I took such a train from North Station to Salem three years ago, and I took a different train from the same station this year, a 40-minute ride to Concord. Both Salem and Concord are full of historical and literary allusions.
I had visited Concord once before, as part of a rental car tour of New England in 1992. This time, my travel was solely by public transport and by foot. After a brief ramble around Monument Square -- in the heart of Concord -- I walked some 45 minutes out Walden Street to the "pond" made famous by Henry David Thoreau, now part of Walden Pond State Reservation.
You need to walk that distance to appreciate how close Thoreau's cabin retreat, built on land owned by his friend and fellow author Ralph Waldo Emerson, was to the town. The park itself is fairly large, and very nicely maintained. The "pond" itself is fairly large, more a lake, but one that can easily be circled on a 1½ mile lakeshore path. The site of Thoreau's cabin is clearly marked, and excavations have determined its exact location. The site has become something of a literary shrine; Thoreau worshippers have brought stones, over the years, and constructed a stone pile and a number of cairns next to the place where the cabin stood.
To simplify matters for automobile-oriented visitors, an exact replica of the cabin has been constructed near the visitor center on the main road, and furnished exactly as the author himself is believed to have done.
So I visited the cabin site, and walked around the lake. The path on the far side of the lake passes within feet of the track from Boston, at a point that the train passes shortly before it arrives at Concord station -- a development against which Henry probably would have protested vehemently.
I returned to town, had lunch at an excellent coffee house, visited the Old Hill Burial Ground -- scary Halloween-appropriate tombstones climbing a steep hill adjacent to the town center -- and walked out to Orchard House, the childhood home of Louisa May Alcott, which served as the background of the family in Little Women. I have never read the novel. If I had, I might well have taken the offered tour of the house, but I suspected I would have missed most of the literary allusions. So I satisfied myself with an exterior photo, and trudged back into town, taking the next train back into Boston.
Next time I visit, I'd like to explore the road from Concord to nearby Lexington, and the Old North Bridge, where the shot was fired "heard round the world." But I'd really need a car to do that. Or even better a bike, as some guidebooks suggest.
The rest of my time in Boston was largely spent re-visiting favorite spots from earlier visits. I had dinner Friday night in very enjoyable outdoor seating adjacent to the Quincy Market near the waterfront. I spent a morning at the Museum of Fine Arts. I explored the waterfront from South Station to the North End. I prowled about Beacon Hill, dodging a number of small tour groups, their members' eyes glazed with exhaustion, and arriving finally at that apex of Boston residential life, Louisburg Square.
My final morning, Sunday, was spent wandering the Esplanade, along the Charles River, eying the sailboats and the occasional swan, until I reached Harvard Bridge. I crossed the bridge, partly for the river view and partly to observe how MIT fraternity members back in 1958 had calibrated the bridge in "smoots" -- each smoot being about 5'7" (in conventional measurement) -- the precise height of Oliver R. Smoot, the shortest member of their pledge class that year. The paint is still fresh on the sidewalk, marking off every ten smoots. "The past is never dead," as Faulkner once said. "It's not even past."
And with that deep thought in mind, I returned by subway to Cambridge, picked up my baggage, and headed back south again to the airport.
Yeah, I really like Boston. In some ways, in its history and its traditions, it is quite different from Seattle. But something in its spirit feels similar.
-------------------------------------
Photo: Memorial Church, taken at night from Harvard Yard.
No comments:
Post a Comment