Literary Pilgrimages of a Naturalist — Story, Setting & Ideas

Wells as Monuments

In the chapter on “The Old Oaken Bucket,” Packard makes a striking claim about material culture. He argues that the stone cylinders lining old wells are more durable than the poems they inspired. “The old well is the first settler’s most enduring monument,” he writes, and then speculates that a person “a thousand years hence” might find these structures intact. This is a naturalist’s perspective: the well is a geological artifact, sunk deep, immune to frost and human neglect. Packard contrasts this permanence with the poem’s “singing quality,” but ultimately suggests the poem may outlast the stone because it voices a universal sentiment—thirst and gratitude. The passage reveals his method: he uses a physical object to anchor a meditation on literary endurance, and he does so without claiming special access to the author’s intentions.

Salt Marshes and Seaport Dignity

In “In Old Newburyport,” Packard describes the salt marshes that surround the city, noting how “through them you must come to it.” The sea, he says, “stretches long arms lovingly as if to clasp it and bear it away.” This personification is characteristic: Packard often attributes intention to natural features. He then catalogs the port’s vanished trade—wine from Madeira, silks from Bilbao, salt from Cadiz—and contrasts the present loneliness of the harbor, where only a coal barge or two wait for the bar to subside. The passage is built on concrete details: twenty-one full-rigged ships built in 1810, forty vessels putting to sea on a single day in 1820. Packard uses these numbers to evoke a lost era, but he does not moralize. Instead, he lets the landscape itself register the change.

Reflections in the Well

Packard returns to the image of the well in a later passage, describing the act of leaning over the curb: “to see your own face reflected as if with that of all mankind in a little circle that is the counterpart of the sky overhead.” This is a carefully constructed simile—the well’s surface mirrors both the individual and the universal. He then extends the image to the first human, “Adam, or whatever the first man was called,” giving thanks for a draught from a spring. The move from a specific New England well to a primordial scene is typical of Packard’s associative logic. He does not argue for a direct line of influence; instead, he suggests that certain experiences—thirst, gratitude, the sight of reflected sky—are constants that link the literary subject to the reader.

The Naturalist’s Gaze on Literary Landscapes

Throughout the excerpts, Packard’s attention to detail is that of a field naturalist. He notes the “level beauty” of salt marshes, the “carefully laid cylinders of stone” that line wells, the “long ridge south of the Merrimac” where shipmasters were born. He is less interested in the writers’ inner lives than in the physical settings they inhabited. When he writes of Daniel Webster choosing a home, he quotes a caption: “No wonder Daniel Webster, wandering southward over the hills in search of a country home, chose this as his abiding place.” The sentence is typical: it attributes the choice to the landscape’s evident appeal, not to any personal motive. Packard’s method is to let the place speak first, and only then to bring in the literary figure.

Packard’s pilgrimages are best read as field notes from a naturalist who happens to be interested in writers. He does not analyze poems or novels; he walks the ground, notes the plants and stones, and then offers a quiet reflection. Readers who expect literary criticism may be disappointed, but those who enjoy seeing how a landscape can shape a writer’s sensibility will find much to savor. The book rewards slow reading, preferably with a map of New England at hand.

Old wells and salt marshes hold their stories quietly, just as Packard found them around Concord. There is a particular stillness in reading how a landscape keeps a writer company. I sometimes wonder if South Africa offered the same patient companionship to its diarist. Seven years in South Africa, volume 2 (of 2) — Key Ideas to Explore lingers on similar ground, where place and memory become inseparable.