This one is near and dear to my heart-I am a history buff, and I live right in the middle of this area. When I go to the North Bridge, I can just feel the history in the ground beneath my feet.
I live about six miles from here, and I drive by this on my way to work. I don't even think of it most of the time. A couple of years ago, I was driving that way on the morning that a big computer system I had been working to install for two years was going live.
I had been up until about 0300, and decided to drive home and get some good sleep and drive back in around 0900, because I would likely be there for the next 24 hours.
So, on the last day of a bitter cold and blustery February, I was driving down that road past the bridge, and there were no cars anywhere. When I went to cross the Concord River, just past the bridge, the road was closed for some reason. I banged a u-turn in the parking for the national site. As I turned the car, I suddenly realized where I was, and how beautiful it was there.
I shut off the car and walked across the road towards the bridge, with the wind blowing the grit and sand in my face, and the thin covers of frozen snow from an old storm trying vainly not to give it up. I recall it was about 10 degrees without wind-chill.
My eyes were watering, and my face, even in that short time was getting that odd feeling of being frozen and inflamed at the same time.
It was beautiful. Not another human in sight, a bright and cold morning sun bathing the bitter cold in a yellow tone.
And when I saw the bridge, I had this sudden pang of history, and for a split second I could imagine that famous moment in history. It came and went so fast, in the blink of an eye. It is like when you smell something like apple pie or diesel fumes and are transported to some other place and time for a single heartbeat, but...you feel it and it is real.
I felt the history of that spot. I had to take that picture, and I loved the way it came out. My wife painted it for me from that image.