Deep Travel: In Thoreau's Wake on the Concord and Merrimack

The Miracle of Lowell

{ 2 2 3 } Though the Concord River flows to the Merrimack at Lowell, Thoreau never came to their confluence. Instead, he avoided the shining City of Spindles and took a shortcut along the Middlesex Canal. He probably did so for practical reasons. The famously tranquil Concord becomes a raging torrent of whitewater in its final two miles, frothing through rocky rapids and roaring over falls. Today the passage is even more difficult. Old dams appear without warning, and other manmade obstructions can slice the skin of a canoe as easily as that of a banana. This river reach is where Mungo’s canoe “became trapped between and on top of rocks which shared the water now with old tires, a refrigerator , a washing machine, wrecked cars and trucks, metal hoops, and bobbing clumps of feces.” With the water much cleaner today and modern technology able to produce vessels with flotation capabilities unheard of in Thoreau’s time, the Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust offers whitewater rafting trips during high water in April and May for seventy-nine dollars. Wearing life jackets and helmets, participants pass old mill sites and arched bridges through the heart of the city as they negotiate rapids with monikers like Twisted Sister, Three Beauties , and Middlesex Dam. Even had rafting existed in Thoreau’s time, low water would have made the river impassable during his September voyage. How paraThe Miracle of Lowell Brilliant Aurora. Houlton, Me., Sept. 4, 1839 . . . the southern quarter of the heavens was entirely illuminated with silver and rose flames, presenting the appearance of an immense fire spread out from the zenith to the horizon. Boston Courier, September 11, 1839 Egyptians Hit Israelis in Retaliatory Raids Manchester Union Leader, September 12, 1969 Favreau guilty in officer’s shooting Lowell Sun, September 10, 2003 2 2 4 c o n f l u e n c e doxical that his passage to the Merrimack on what now is viewed as a bucolic journey would be with the flow of commerce along the canal , the interstate highway of its day. Yet it seems typical of the ironical Thoreau, who would spend much of the voyage rowing upstream against both the river and social currents. Avoiding Lowell, he bypassed the emerging future of America and missed,perhaps,theultimateexpressionofhumanity’sarrogantcommand and control over the waters he extolled. No doubt the city would have made a worthy whetstone against which he could have sharpened his rapier social criticism to the amusement of posterity. Even so, Lowell was never far from his mind, whether he was contemplating the inability of fish to overcome dams or observing boats loaded with bricks made of New Hampshire clay headed downstream to build factories . He mentions the city almost twenty times in the course of the book. He could not escape its influence even as he rowed away on the impoundment-fattened Merrimack, the dam at Pawtucket Falls making the river like a lake for the first eighteen miles. A sounding horn startled me out of Thoreauvian thoughts induced by a brief interlude of white-line fever as I drove the pickup on I-495. I grasped the steering wheel tightly. Around me was a forest of signs giving direction, offering place names, advising me of the speed limit and turning lanes. “Don’t miss the exit!” Alan shouted. “It’s here,” he pointed. “Got it,” I replied, giving him a thumbs up as I moved across several lanes and wove in and out of traffic like a stockcar driver jockeying for position. The logical flow of navigable waters dictated that Thoreau skirt Lowell , but caught in an even more powerful current, Alan and I couldn’t help being drawn to the mill city. We rocketed off the highway and headed at sixty-five miles per hour down the Lowell Connector toward the heart of the redbrick metropolis. The current of America’s destiny drew us. It may sound a little melodramatic and pretentious, silly even, but there is hardly a better way to describe what impelled us to Lowell. Since its creation as the nation’s first major planned city, Lowell has been a lens through which America can be seen. Even for citizens t h e m i r a c l e o f l o w e l l 2 2 5 who have never heard of the city, the arc of its life is embedded in the...