Travelogue #10: Nerd trip.

On my last full day as a tourist in the US, I headed to the town of Concord, about an hour out from Boston. 

I went there partly because by that stage of my trip, I was sick of cities and wanted a change of scenery, but more so because many of Concord’s past residents had played an important role in my life.

It always surprises people when I tell them that there was a time in my life when I knew no English. Reading, writing, English words, now play such a huge part in my life that it seems unimaginable that they were ever absent from the world of Doots. 

Little Women was the first English book I ever read, and I read it the hard way - out loud, testing the way each word rolled off my tongue. I read it with a dictionary next to me, painstakingly looking up each word, and then writing down each new word in a vocabulary book. I memorised that entire vocabulary book off by heart through tireless repetition. Looking back now, I have no idea where I got this much discipline from as a young child.

But it worked. In fact, it more than worked.

Reading Little Women not only helped me learn the English language, but instilled in me a love of words that continues to the present day.

It was because of this love of words that I read and read and read as a child. At school, I didn’t just want to be comfortable in English, I wanted to be the best at it. I chose to study law because of my fascination with the intricacies of language. I got my first “real” job because of my writing. I started to blog because of this urge to simply tap away at my keyboard day after day. And while I still don’t know what exactly I want from life and what I want to do in life, I know with absolute certainty that it would involve writing. And if I had to trace this conviction to one moment, it would be the moment I brought home Little Women from my school library. 

In the years that followed, I was introduced poetry. I bought cheap anthologies from secondhand bookstores. I stumbled across a poem by Thoreau which I copied into my first Moleskine for no other reason than the fact that I loved its rhythm and rhyme. 

“I was made erect and lone,/And within me is the bone;/Still my vision will be clear,/Still my life will not be drear,/To the center all is near./Where I sit there is my throne./If age choose to sit apart,/If age choose, give me the start,/Take the sap and leave the heart.”

But Concord’s fame extends beyond its writers, the likes of Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, and Margaret Sidney (Five Little Peppers). Concord played an important part in the abolitionist and transcendentalist movement in the US. The Battle of Lexington and Concord was staged there, kicking off the American Revolution almost two and half centuries ago. Daniel Chester French was born there and went onto produce, among other works, the two most photographed statues in the United States - the Lincoln Memorial and the Statue of John Harvard. Needless to stay, I was intrigued. How could such a small town play such a huge role in US political and cultural history? 

When I arrived in Concord, the air smelled like wet laundry. The Boston Area had reached the end of its spell of fine autumn weather. Cutting my walk around the Walden pond short, I headed quickly to the Emerson House to avoid the rain. 

It was a strange way to be sightseeing. I walked up the front steps of the porch, rang the door bell, a little old lady opened the door. Peering inside, the scene looked so residential that I momentarily wondered if I had come to the wrong place, until the lady asked: "are you here for a tour, dear?“ 

I smiled in relief and walked inside. I was the only tourist there. The elderly lady, who turned out to be the curator, personally took me into each room and told me stories about each household item as if they had belonged to her own family.

My visit to the Alcott’s Orchard House and Old Manse turned out in the same way. A group of women, each with incredibly detailed knowledge of the Emerson, Alcott and Hawthorne family trees and social circles, guided me around each room and told me tales of their lives, complete with the exact dates and the most obscure details.

What each of these ‘curators’ had in common was their evident pride in the town’s literary heritage. This pride was infectious, as I spent the rest of the day paying tribute to the minds that changed my life at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I was touched by the pens and pencils people left on Emerson and Alcott’s graves and fumbled through my bag, looking for a spare pen to leave there myself. 

Later that afternoon, I found a table at the busiest cafe in town, ate chowder, drank coffee, treated myself to some delicious pumpkin ice cream, and read quietly for an hour. I told myself that I needed to simply enjoy a different pace of travelling for a change.

But the truth was that I didn’t want to leave.

In 24 hours, I would be travelling back to New York to spend one final night there before flying to Reykjavik. Iceland signalled the start of a new continent, just when I was getting used to (and growing fond of) America.

So I lingered for as long as I could in Concord, a small town both so foreign and so significant to my life. I lingered until the sky darkened and thunder started to roll in. 

And then, it was time to say goodbye. 

xx doots

Pebbles and pens people left on Emerson’s grave. 

There was a flag next to Alcott’s grave because she had served in the Civil War as a nurse.

Oh come on - every city and town in the world needs a sign that says "CHILDREN PLAYING”.