Concord lies about nineteen or so miles west of Boston, and can be considered a part of the greater Boston area.
If there is any place in America that I think can rightly be called "quaint", than Concord is a quaint place. Here, you have a community that still retains that old New England feel to it. It looks like a town that would have graced the New England landscape over the past few centuries, with a town square lined with homes and little shops, some green, leafy parks, and a great big church or two, with spires that dominate the town. Yes, this town has a distinctly Old World feel to it, and yet it is very much uniquely American.
In fact, I might go so far as to say that I tend to feel more a sense of being American here than anywhere else.
Why? Because it has a wonderful and truly unique history, especially given that it is such a relatively small town?
Maybe. Surely, in fact, this is a part of it. But it's more than that.
You see, here, there is the feel of a certain potential. Apparently, that has long been the case here. That is why it has the history that it does, that it can boast such a prominent role in the histroy books. Because it always had a potential to symbolize the potential of America. There is a spirit here (and yes, I am using the present tense, and not merely relegating this spirit to the past) of yearning to mold America into a better place. Concord has led the way before, and despite the strong skepticism of many (another familiar element to be traced in the past), it just might still be leading the way in the present, and for the future.
This was true when the Minutemen (who originated here) fired upon the British in April of 1775, in what would prove the first real actual battle of the American Revolution. It was true when this town was home to no less than four prominent writers, (Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Bronson Alcott, the father of Louisa May Alcott), and was the center of the Transcendentalist literary movement. This has been true when activists organized to preserve Walden Woods, and it is true today, as a new fight is being prepared, with the town's recent move to banish plastic bottles.
Concord has been the site of some measure of controversy and confrontation now for five different centuries now. It was in the seventeenth century, when the white man came, and this place, which was then a native village known as Musketaquid, was sold to British settlers through peaceful means. It was so in the eighteenth century, when this was the site of some where some local rebellious colonists met to plan against the British and, when the British actually arrived, Paul Revere's famous midnight ride readied the colonists, who prepared for their arrival and, ultimately, the "shot heard around the world" was fired, thus beginning the war for American independence. It was true during far more tranquil days in the woods at Walden during the nineteenth century, when solitary Henry David Thoreau wrote about his life in the woods and contemplated the wonders of nature, something that enjoyed some success during his own lifetime, but which grew and grew over time, until it became symbolic of the conflict between modern society and the entire way that it looked at nature (which is through conquest, as if it were somehow detached from us. In the twentieth century, there was a very modern day fight to preserve Walden Woods from development, which was a very real threat. And so, now in the twenty-first century, it seems to be in the middle of another conflict of another sort, having just banned the sale of plastic water bottles, which may be dismissed a little too quickly by people who don't give it enough thought, but which has all sorts of wider ramifications about privatization and the expected water wars (which are supposed to be this century's answer to the oil wars fought during the last century), about pollution (both in making the bottles, and in discarding them - and where and how they are discarded), and about our culture of consumption overall, where "freedom" these days is linked merely to consumer choices (and conveniently, the "freedom" of corporations to sell us something usually remains a more muted argument).
Perhaps we could be surprised that such a small town (well, it's actually a city with a fairly substantial population, but it certainly retains that small town feel) has been the source of so many conflicts throughout it's history, and so often led the charge to what would prove to be prominent battles, which often had many more layers to it than might initially meet the eye. However, these things have to start somewhere, and this town is unique. it does have a history of such things, now. Whether it was the muskets that were fired in April of 1775, or the more subtle power of thought from the writings of the Transcendentalists, particularly of Thoreau and his writings during his time in Walden Woods, or the fight to preserve those woods in the twentieth century, or perhaps even now, when a new and entirely different kind of fight is being waged, and Concord, once again, seems to be taking the lead, as the first real battleground for this latest controversy. This is just the beginning, and not nearly the end, of that one.
I, for one, am paying attention to Concord, to see what the relevant issues are, and what direction this town seems to be taking. We could do worse than to pay attention to a place that not only is richly steeped in history, but also seems rather preoccupied with making history. When we feel that need to find our center, or to cleanse ourselves in some sense, we can always turn to the timelessness of the place of Walden, either physically or spiritually.
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