By Deborah Bier, publisher and editor of the Concord Magazine.

Concord is home to three rivers, about a half-dozen great ponds (depending upon who is doing the counting), nearly a dozen or so brooks, several vernal pools, and smaller ponds, swamps and streams of great number. And everywhere they flow or stand, these waters have attracted artists of every ilk, naturalists, sportsmen, picnickers, swimmers, boaters and dreamers to stop a while and rest or play...refresh themselves in their cool...seek out their secret ways.

But it is to the writers, poets, and spiritual seekers that the waters of Concord have provided some of the greatest inspiration, the fruits of which have been passed down to us through their words. To me, the most memorable are their lines of renewal, wonder, epiphany and joy, glinting off the page like the sunlight glows on the still surfaces of our ponds and rivers.

We dedicate this issue of the Concord Magazine to Concord's waters. Rather than use my lesser talents to describe them, I give deference to the writing of others to illuminate these liquid jewels in their best reflection.

Rowing our boat against the current, between wide meadows, we turn aside into the Assabeth. A more lovely stream than this, for a mile above its junction with the Concord, has never flowed on earth.... Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse Small apple trees in bloom at river's edge at the foot of Lee's Meadow. Hear song sparrows singing. Hardly a ripple now. We see the yellow-green clouds of the bankside willows reflected in the still water. Redwings call and cross the stream from willow to willow. Edwin Way Teale, A Conscious Stillness By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here one the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Concord Hymn It will be Grass-ground River as long as grass grows and water runs here; it will be Concord River only while men lead peaceable lives on its banks. To an extinct race it was grass-ground, where they hunted and fished, and it is still perennial grass-ground to Concord farmers, who own the Great Meadows, and get the hay from year to year. Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. Henry David Thoreau, Walden

White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors. Henry David Thoreau, Walden At sunset on a hazy summer night the meadows along the Concord River offer a fortune in light and air and bird-life. The lazy green water drifts along, bound north for the Merrimack, in no hurry, falling less than a foot a mile. It barely has the power to keep vegetation from its channel. It hasn't the energy to ripple its own surface. Ron McAdow, The Concord, Sudbury and Assabet Rivers The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Henry David Thoreau, Walden I shall always remember this morning as one of the most beautiful canoeing days that Edwin and I spent on the rivers, one of quiet harmony in nature as well as between friends....A song sparrow, perched on a dead branch over the water, carols his version of "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." He may only be declaiming his territory, nothing more, but to us, his listeners, there is a lilt of joy and summer. Ann Zwinger, A Conscious Stillness

Text: ©2000 The Concord, MA Homepage           

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