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Walkabout, Day 3
I can't believe it's only Day 3! Today was another busy day, culminating in the fact that I've only been in my hotel room for about 15 minutes, which is why I'm getting such a late start. But at least I've got a reliable internet connection - if I don't get too tired (As in, if this doesn't take too long) I'll try to get some pics up. My plan is to just go back through the posts I've already done and add hyper links, so if you don't see any, then I've not gotten them uploaded yet. ;)
Today dawned in sharp contrast to yesterday with the clearest sky I've seen in ages. There were some similarities, though, in that it was even more windy than yesterday was (yesterday was so windy that it sounded like a ghost was hanging out outside the window of my hotel room). I was up at the usual time, and got my things together, and went to the breakfast room at the Econolodge only to discover that all they had was cereal. I guess I should have expected that. So, without tea or food, I got on the road. There was a slight detour, though. I'd say I got lost, except that I knew where I was the whole time. Rather, I should say that I couldn't figure out how to get where I needed to be because I was trying to get on to 65S, but Hagerstown - which is laid out terribly - had no signs up for it, and the road I thought it should be was one way the wrong direction. Still, I knew what direction I had to go, and I knew where I was the whole time, so I guess I wasn't really lost. And soon enough I found myself heading out on the right road, so it worked out without too much trouble.
Not much farther along, I found breakfast in the form of...Cracker Barrel. Feeling much better fed and caffeinated, I headed down to Antietam Battlefield.
The battle at Antietam (which is the name of a stream) is also known as the battle of Sharpsburg (which is the small town next to the stream) and took place in the fall of 1862 (September 17th). Note that even though I was there TODAY, this won't be as good or accurate a description as the one I wrote about Gettysburg, because I just don't know as much about Antietam - in particular, I've already forgotten some of the middle rank generals names (or rather, I know their names but can't quite recall which did what and how it relates to Antietam, complicated by the fact that I've been reading about a few other battles in my current reading material) The main battle lasted only one day, and that day is the single bloodiest of the entire war (though it's not the bloodiest battle over all, just the bloodiest day.) Like Gettysburg, Antietam is a time when Lee decided to take the offensive and invade the North. He devised a complicated strategy that involved splitting his army up and sending the different parts to different directions. After some messing about involving problems with gaps in the mountain ranges, he eventually made his way to Sharpsburg, on the west side of the creek, and his troops were encamped around this.
What he didn't know was that a few days earlier, three Union soldiers from the main Federal army, hanging out in a field, had found some documents wrapped around some cigars, and one had had the good sense to recognize that what he held was very, very important: nothing more less than Lee's battle plans. These were taken to McClellan, who was sensible to the fact that he had the tool necessary to completely destroy the Confederate army. Thus, he maneuvered his troops to the east side of the Antietam and devised a three pronged attack meant to secure victory.
Unfortunately, things didn't go all that well: the three attacks were terribly coordinated, and the result was an incredibly bloody fiasco. The fighting started at dawn on the north and south ends of the field. In the north, Federal troops coming in from the north and east had the good fortune to see sunlight gleaming off the bayonets of Confederates who were stationed in a cornfield. Artillery immediately opened fire, and the results were devastating - in one Confederate unit 60% of the men fell in a space of something like 20 minutes; survivors tell that the men fell dead still in lined ranks, having not even been able to react to the fact that they were under attack. In the fighting that followed, the two sides surged back and forth across this field until it was shorn bare of corn, and still went back and forth.
Meanwhile, on the south end of the battlefield, Gen. Burnside was leading men across the Antietam using one of the bridges. There were heights on either side, though, and the western heights towards which the Union charged were filled with Confederates - and the bridge was only wide enough for about four abreast to go through. The result was that a few thousand Confederates held off something like three or four times their number of Federals literally for hours, inflicting heavy casualties before they were finally pushed back. (The worst part of this, though it wasn't evident today because of all the rain, is that Antietam is normally VERY shallow. The first time I was here, I stood atop to bridge and took a picture looking straight down, and you can see the bottom of the water. The troops could have walked across the river at any point.)
Back on the northern end of the field, as units charged and countercharged, fighting spread to woods - really more like ravines lining the edges of the farms all about - which made it even harder. Eventually, though, the Confederate line broke, and they retreated south until they found a lane which, due to heavy use, was considerably below the level of the surrounding fields. This "natural" trench was immediately occupied, and went down in history as Bloody Lane (or sometimes just the sunken road). The Confederates repulsed charge after charge until finally they're line broke; by the time it was done the road was literally filled with corpses.
On all fronts, the Confederates fell back to positions close on the town, but could not be driven further. In 12 hours of fighting, of the roughly 150,000 men on the field (90,000 Federal, 55,000 Confederate) roughly 25% were casualties - (12,000 Federal and 10,000 Confederates). But this is deceptive - due to McClellan's permanent over-cautiousness, 30,000 Federal troops had never seen action - so when you consider that only 60,000 Union troops were actually involved, putting total fighting force at 120,000....yeah. Many units suffered casualty rates higher than 50%. This is one of the battles in the Civil War where the missing weren't deserters, they were the troops whose bodies were too completely destroyed to be identified.
So yeah. Pretty awful.
Anyway, I started out on the battlefield at about 9:30 AM. I watched their introductory movie, which wasn't bad, and then I set out. There were more memorials on this battlefield than I remembered, but still nothing like the numbers at Gettysburg, and I came much closer to accomplishing a goal of mine than I possibly could have yesterday: namely, to photograph as many of the memorials as possible. I still missed some, but not many. And as at Gettysburg, most of the memorials were from Federal states, though the one that the state of Maryland erected was interesting: it commemorated MD boys who fought on both sides, which I thought was neat.
Best of all, because of the fine weather, I got to do today what I didn't get to do yesterday: I walked the entire battlefield (more or less ;) ). I started north, wandering around the Dunker Church, West Wood, Cornfield and < href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/unforth/3420267828/in/set-72157616370992125/">East Woods - all sites of heavy fighting. From there I walked south down to Bloody Lane (which you can actually walk through, which is rather eerie) and continued on down (quite a ways) to the bridge where Burnside acted like an idiot. Then I swung all the way back, taking side trails instead of following the main road to avoid duplication as much as possible. In all it was somewhere between 6 and 8 miles I think...wait, lets find out...wow, okay, according to gmap pedometer, just the route I'm certain of was 8, which doesn't include some random meandering or some back-and-forthing that I know I had to do but can't really recall specifically. So anyway, it was a whole lot of walking, and with all the photography, it took about 3 and a half hours. I didn't realize until the three hour point that, with the clear blue sky and bright sun, I was in danger of a sunburn, but most of my skin was covered fortunately - except my face, which is now a funny shade of pink (except my nose, which is a little scary red... ;) )
Unsurprisingly, this prompted some reflection on my part!
1. On walking. Even though some parts of this battlefield are HIGHLY walkable, I'm constantly amazed by just how few people bother. Most just take the driving tour (which is the main route that I followed) and don't even go onto the planned out paths (of which there are several). At the extreme, don't even in stop, they just drive on through; others walk as far as, for example, across the Burnside bridge. Don't get me wrong - I do NOT expect other people do to what I did. I walk a ton, and even I'm a little stiff - the terrain is VERY hilly (rippled, even) and the sun, while not sweltering, was dazzling. However, that people don't, for the most part, walk down the Bloody Lane? That people don't even get out of their cars when they pass important parts of the battle (though they stop to read the plaques from inside their car)? I really, really don't get it. Now, there were a few places that I just didn't have the energy to walk because it would have required doubling back or some such - in particular, I took one look at the hill overlooking where Burnside attacked and decided that nothing on earth was gonna make me climb that hill. And so, after I got back to the visitors center and finished up there, I decided to drive the whole thing just to see what I had missed. And ya know? I'm so glad that I got to walk it. Because with the way the terrain rolls in hills, even the foot of difference between my height walking and my height sitting in my car made a big difference in how I could see the battlefield. But also, it just leads to a more visceral view of the battle, which leads to...
2. Suffering and the Civil War Tourist Experience. I actually started thinking about this yesterday (I can't imagine why...). It seems oddly apropos to suffer just a little while wandering around these battlefields. For example, the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg on July 4th, 1863, took place in a driving rain storm. Even some battles were fought in the rain (Spotsylvania Courthouse comes to mind) and others were fought in the sweltering heat (none pop to mind, but they certainly were!) and in the freezing cold (Fredericksburg was in December). The men who fought endured all of that. Now, if there's any reason to visit the battlefields, it's to better understand what it was "really like" - and I feel like a bit of suffering helps to bring that home, whether it's losing my breath climbing the umpteenth hill or getting drenched in the rain. I would really like to sit some of the others out there down and find out why they're there - because clearly they don't see it the way I do. So how do I see it?
3. So What Was "It" Really Like? Obviously, I'll never know what it was really like for a soldier in the Civil War. No book can adequately portray it, and no battlefield visit can really bring it home. This was vividly brought to my mind by the intro video today, which reminded me of something I forget from time to time: The Civil War happened in color. Sound crazy? When one immerses oneself in Civil War stuff, one sees all kinds of horrifying photographs - it was one of the first wars where photography was really possible, and there are first hand photos of many battles - primarily of the scared landscape and dead bodies, because the actual battles moved to much to be photographed. But all of these pictures are in black and white. Of course, you never really forget that it wasn't actually in black and white, but it's truly shocking to put a black and white picture side by side with reality and realize that all of it is in color. That jacket would have been blue, that blood red, that body probably starting on towards a horrible bloated brown color, none of which is captured. And that realization brings with it others: battles are smoky from cannon and gun fire; battles smell of sulfur and guts; battles sound like all the fireworks you've ever heard. Standing in the (currently cleared due to the time of year) Cornfield, all you can try to do is imagine: what did they see? What did they hear? Had they gotten to eat breakfast? Did their feet hurt? Why were they there? Why am I here?
4. Why Am I Here? Perhaps the crowning question of them all - but I've actually already summed up my answer in the previous two. Why do I go to battlefields? I'm easily moved by the suffering of those that I read about - though I'm bad at EXPRESSING empathy, I think (though I'm not sure) that I FEEL more empathy, especially for suffering, than the average person. (but I'm not actually sure - it's not the kind of thing that people talk about much; I know that I seem to feel more than the incredibly small number of people I've actually talked to about this). When I read about or am told about an injury, for example, I can usually imagine what it felt like (often with vaguely stomach turning results, so I try not to do this...) And when I occasionally realize that in every one of those houses I'm driving by are people living with lives, dreams, hopes, failures, successes, everything, that I can't begin to comprehend, I find it utterly overwhelming and beyond my comprehension. I read about the Civil War because I find stories of battles interesting - I don't care about individual heroics, I want to know about who charged who, who repulsed who, who was tactically brilliant (usually Lee), who blundered (usually whoever is leading the Union) - the overarching currents. But when I visit a battlefield, it's all about the little things I talked about in 3. Who stood here? What happened here? What could it possibly have been like. I stand there and try to sketch out all the parts of it in my head until the feelings almost overwhelm me...and then I move on. And I try not to do that too many times, cause it's a bit too upsetting. ;)
Today, more than anything, I got to see what a difference good weather makes in ... everything. I wasn't upset, and I was having fun and exerting myself, and the result was that my introspection was mostly related to the battle and the events at hand.
I finished up at Antietam at about 2:30, having walked and then driven around the entire battlefield. I hadn't eaten anything since Crackerbarrel, so I wandered into Sharpsburg and stopped at the first place that looked promising: a home made ice cream place. Unfortunately, they only took cash: I had only enough for a "kiddie" size, at a buck fifteen. Fortunately, the "kiddie" size at the place turns out to be about as much ice cream as typically comes in a "Love It" size at Coldstone (I'm not even exaggerating) and the flavor I got - Turtle Cheesecake - had more mix-ins, too. Best lunch ever? Maybe not, but after walking so much, it really hit the spot.
While eating it, I sat down with a map to answer a surprisingly thorny question: where next? I had been thinking of swinging in to middle Virginia and going to Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Wilderness, etc., but the route looked annoying - it just wasn't a very convenient trip from my location, and I decided that, all things considered, I could just as easily hit these places on the way back, or some other time. What I really wanted to do was go to Shiloh, so I started planning out the route that would get me there: 81S, to be exact. So where does that go?
Through the Shenandoah Valley!
On first inspection, the Shenandoah Valley suffers from the worst failure of imagination ever: the Shenandoah River flows through the Shenandoah Valley, flanked by the Shenandoah Mountains; somewhere in there is the town of Shenandoah, and, well, you get the idea. However, I'd driven through the valley once before (last year in April) and knew better: it wasn't a failure of imagination, it was the exact opposite. The Shenandoah is so incredibly beautiful that the mind boggles, and all imagination is otherwise occupied, and so nothing much else can be thought of other than how incredibly beautiful it is.
I don't know what makes it so lovely. Maybe it's the ridges of mountains on either side, or the river snaking back and forth in it's valley, or the way that the clearings around farms make it easy to get sweeping views. But whatever it is, I knew ever since last year that I wanted to come back here. After today, I know that I need to come back here as a separate trip: there are too many things I want to do for the kind of journey I'm currently on. So I decided to just hit a few of the ones I most wanted to do last year. One I did today - the Shenandoah Sky Drive.
Perched atop the first ridge of mountains, all of which is National Park, is a road. For a fee, one can drive on this road as it snakes and switch-backs it's way through the mountains (and occasionally is intersected by other roads) at altitudes generally above 2000 feet, and sometimes above three thousand. Because it follows the ridge, it basically goes northeast/southwest. And I wanted to drive it. So I did - I spent an hour of my drive today up there (I stopped when all the absolutely amazing vistas and views started to lose their magical quality - I didn't want that). It's indescribable. I'd say look at the pictures when I upload them, but from what I saw on my little screen they don't do it justice - things in the background fade out far more than in reality. From the eastern side, the rest of Virginia spreads out, basically flat all the way to the horizon. From the western side, the Shenandoah Valley unfolds and the river meanders, and beyond that ridge after ridge of mountains can be seen (I counted five). Even though I promised myself I wouldn't stop at every outlook...I basically did (though I didn't always get out of the car) because every new one brought a different angle on the scene that revealed some new facet. Meanwhile, winter-bare trees spread up and out and into every fold, deer graze along the side of the road (or, rather, flee in terror when a car approaches), and above it all swoop birds of prey.
See why I want to go back?
Without any particular reason, I settled on the town of Lexington as my goal. I had already mostly made up my mind before I stopped at the Valley's welcome center; my chat with the very nice lady there solidified my decision: I can visit Stonewall Jackson's house, for one (I hadn't even realized it was here when I decided on this destination) and can visit the Natural Bridge Caverns for another. See, the second thing I wanted to do in the Shenandoah was visit some natural caverns. I don't yet know enough about the local geology to know why they formed, but I hope to tomorrow - all I know is that there are a lot of them. I picked the one I did arbitrarily, but the lady told me it was one of the more natural (rather than all fancified and done up) caverns around, and that's just perfect. I love going into caverns, and I haven't in ages, so that's tomorrows activity. That and driving. And Lexington is only about 10 miles from the cavern in question, which is perfect.
On the drive to Lexington, it was that time of evening: phone call time! Today I had a very important one: it's my grandfather's 91st birthday. We had a nice long conversation, which was good, and I once again vowed to call more often (I haven't spoken to him since Christmas, which is simply shameful given his age and the fact that I know he would like to hear from me more often). I WILL keep that promise this time; my goal is at least once a month. That should be easy enough to do...I wrote a big long post about my grandfather on his birthday last year, though, and I find that I have surprisingly little more to say about it. Our relationship was once very close, and then became rocky, and now I find I'm quite happy with it and at peace with it, which is just what I would have wanted. After that, I called mom, and we chatted about nothin' much, and I got off just as I arrived at Lexington (much to my surprise, since I'd zoned out). Dinner was Ruby Tuesdays, hotel is Best Western, and all in all it was a very nice day. I even put Binghamton (mostly) out of my mind - which is probably for the best.
I'm too tired for pictures tonight - but I'll try to get it done in the morning. Until then....
Today dawned in sharp contrast to yesterday with the clearest sky I've seen in ages. There were some similarities, though, in that it was even more windy than yesterday was (yesterday was so windy that it sounded like a ghost was hanging out outside the window of my hotel room). I was up at the usual time, and got my things together, and went to the breakfast room at the Econolodge only to discover that all they had was cereal. I guess I should have expected that. So, without tea or food, I got on the road. There was a slight detour, though. I'd say I got lost, except that I knew where I was the whole time. Rather, I should say that I couldn't figure out how to get where I needed to be because I was trying to get on to 65S, but Hagerstown - which is laid out terribly - had no signs up for it, and the road I thought it should be was one way the wrong direction. Still, I knew what direction I had to go, and I knew where I was the whole time, so I guess I wasn't really lost. And soon enough I found myself heading out on the right road, so it worked out without too much trouble.
Not much farther along, I found breakfast in the form of...Cracker Barrel. Feeling much better fed and caffeinated, I headed down to Antietam Battlefield.
The battle at Antietam (which is the name of a stream) is also known as the battle of Sharpsburg (which is the small town next to the stream) and took place in the fall of 1862 (September 17th). Note that even though I was there TODAY, this won't be as good or accurate a description as the one I wrote about Gettysburg, because I just don't know as much about Antietam - in particular, I've already forgotten some of the middle rank generals names (or rather, I know their names but can't quite recall which did what and how it relates to Antietam, complicated by the fact that I've been reading about a few other battles in my current reading material) The main battle lasted only one day, and that day is the single bloodiest of the entire war (though it's not the bloodiest battle over all, just the bloodiest day.) Like Gettysburg, Antietam is a time when Lee decided to take the offensive and invade the North. He devised a complicated strategy that involved splitting his army up and sending the different parts to different directions. After some messing about involving problems with gaps in the mountain ranges, he eventually made his way to Sharpsburg, on the west side of the creek, and his troops were encamped around this.
What he didn't know was that a few days earlier, three Union soldiers from the main Federal army, hanging out in a field, had found some documents wrapped around some cigars, and one had had the good sense to recognize that what he held was very, very important: nothing more less than Lee's battle plans. These were taken to McClellan, who was sensible to the fact that he had the tool necessary to completely destroy the Confederate army. Thus, he maneuvered his troops to the east side of the Antietam and devised a three pronged attack meant to secure victory.
Unfortunately, things didn't go all that well: the three attacks were terribly coordinated, and the result was an incredibly bloody fiasco. The fighting started at dawn on the north and south ends of the field. In the north, Federal troops coming in from the north and east had the good fortune to see sunlight gleaming off the bayonets of Confederates who were stationed in a cornfield. Artillery immediately opened fire, and the results were devastating - in one Confederate unit 60% of the men fell in a space of something like 20 minutes; survivors tell that the men fell dead still in lined ranks, having not even been able to react to the fact that they were under attack. In the fighting that followed, the two sides surged back and forth across this field until it was shorn bare of corn, and still went back and forth.
Meanwhile, on the south end of the battlefield, Gen. Burnside was leading men across the Antietam using one of the bridges. There were heights on either side, though, and the western heights towards which the Union charged were filled with Confederates - and the bridge was only wide enough for about four abreast to go through. The result was that a few thousand Confederates held off something like three or four times their number of Federals literally for hours, inflicting heavy casualties before they were finally pushed back. (The worst part of this, though it wasn't evident today because of all the rain, is that Antietam is normally VERY shallow. The first time I was here, I stood atop to bridge and took a picture looking straight down, and you can see the bottom of the water. The troops could have walked across the river at any point.)
Back on the northern end of the field, as units charged and countercharged, fighting spread to woods - really more like ravines lining the edges of the farms all about - which made it even harder. Eventually, though, the Confederate line broke, and they retreated south until they found a lane which, due to heavy use, was considerably below the level of the surrounding fields. This "natural" trench was immediately occupied, and went down in history as Bloody Lane (or sometimes just the sunken road). The Confederates repulsed charge after charge until finally they're line broke; by the time it was done the road was literally filled with corpses.
On all fronts, the Confederates fell back to positions close on the town, but could not be driven further. In 12 hours of fighting, of the roughly 150,000 men on the field (90,000 Federal, 55,000 Confederate) roughly 25% were casualties - (12,000 Federal and 10,000 Confederates). But this is deceptive - due to McClellan's permanent over-cautiousness, 30,000 Federal troops had never seen action - so when you consider that only 60,000 Union troops were actually involved, putting total fighting force at 120,000....yeah. Many units suffered casualty rates higher than 50%. This is one of the battles in the Civil War where the missing weren't deserters, they were the troops whose bodies were too completely destroyed to be identified.
So yeah. Pretty awful.
Anyway, I started out on the battlefield at about 9:30 AM. I watched their introductory movie, which wasn't bad, and then I set out. There were more memorials on this battlefield than I remembered, but still nothing like the numbers at Gettysburg, and I came much closer to accomplishing a goal of mine than I possibly could have yesterday: namely, to photograph as many of the memorials as possible. I still missed some, but not many. And as at Gettysburg, most of the memorials were from Federal states, though the one that the state of Maryland erected was interesting: it commemorated MD boys who fought on both sides, which I thought was neat.
Best of all, because of the fine weather, I got to do today what I didn't get to do yesterday: I walked the entire battlefield (more or less ;) ). I started north, wandering around the Dunker Church, West Wood, Cornfield and < href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/unforth/3420267828/in/set-72157616370992125/">East Woods - all sites of heavy fighting. From there I walked south down to Bloody Lane (which you can actually walk through, which is rather eerie) and continued on down (quite a ways) to the bridge where Burnside acted like an idiot. Then I swung all the way back, taking side trails instead of following the main road to avoid duplication as much as possible. In all it was somewhere between 6 and 8 miles I think...wait, lets find out...wow, okay, according to gmap pedometer, just the route I'm certain of was 8, which doesn't include some random meandering or some back-and-forthing that I know I had to do but can't really recall specifically. So anyway, it was a whole lot of walking, and with all the photography, it took about 3 and a half hours. I didn't realize until the three hour point that, with the clear blue sky and bright sun, I was in danger of a sunburn, but most of my skin was covered fortunately - except my face, which is now a funny shade of pink (except my nose, which is a little scary red... ;) )
Unsurprisingly, this prompted some reflection on my part!
1. On walking. Even though some parts of this battlefield are HIGHLY walkable, I'm constantly amazed by just how few people bother. Most just take the driving tour (which is the main route that I followed) and don't even go onto the planned out paths (of which there are several). At the extreme, don't even in stop, they just drive on through; others walk as far as, for example, across the Burnside bridge. Don't get me wrong - I do NOT expect other people do to what I did. I walk a ton, and even I'm a little stiff - the terrain is VERY hilly (rippled, even) and the sun, while not sweltering, was dazzling. However, that people don't, for the most part, walk down the Bloody Lane? That people don't even get out of their cars when they pass important parts of the battle (though they stop to read the plaques from inside their car)? I really, really don't get it. Now, there were a few places that I just didn't have the energy to walk because it would have required doubling back or some such - in particular, I took one look at the hill overlooking where Burnside attacked and decided that nothing on earth was gonna make me climb that hill. And so, after I got back to the visitors center and finished up there, I decided to drive the whole thing just to see what I had missed. And ya know? I'm so glad that I got to walk it. Because with the way the terrain rolls in hills, even the foot of difference between my height walking and my height sitting in my car made a big difference in how I could see the battlefield. But also, it just leads to a more visceral view of the battle, which leads to...
2. Suffering and the Civil War Tourist Experience. I actually started thinking about this yesterday (I can't imagine why...). It seems oddly apropos to suffer just a little while wandering around these battlefields. For example, the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg on July 4th, 1863, took place in a driving rain storm. Even some battles were fought in the rain (Spotsylvania Courthouse comes to mind) and others were fought in the sweltering heat (none pop to mind, but they certainly were!) and in the freezing cold (Fredericksburg was in December). The men who fought endured all of that. Now, if there's any reason to visit the battlefields, it's to better understand what it was "really like" - and I feel like a bit of suffering helps to bring that home, whether it's losing my breath climbing the umpteenth hill or getting drenched in the rain. I would really like to sit some of the others out there down and find out why they're there - because clearly they don't see it the way I do. So how do I see it?
3. So What Was "It" Really Like? Obviously, I'll never know what it was really like for a soldier in the Civil War. No book can adequately portray it, and no battlefield visit can really bring it home. This was vividly brought to my mind by the intro video today, which reminded me of something I forget from time to time: The Civil War happened in color. Sound crazy? When one immerses oneself in Civil War stuff, one sees all kinds of horrifying photographs - it was one of the first wars where photography was really possible, and there are first hand photos of many battles - primarily of the scared landscape and dead bodies, because the actual battles moved to much to be photographed. But all of these pictures are in black and white. Of course, you never really forget that it wasn't actually in black and white, but it's truly shocking to put a black and white picture side by side with reality and realize that all of it is in color. That jacket would have been blue, that blood red, that body probably starting on towards a horrible bloated brown color, none of which is captured. And that realization brings with it others: battles are smoky from cannon and gun fire; battles smell of sulfur and guts; battles sound like all the fireworks you've ever heard. Standing in the (currently cleared due to the time of year) Cornfield, all you can try to do is imagine: what did they see? What did they hear? Had they gotten to eat breakfast? Did their feet hurt? Why were they there? Why am I here?
4. Why Am I Here? Perhaps the crowning question of them all - but I've actually already summed up my answer in the previous two. Why do I go to battlefields? I'm easily moved by the suffering of those that I read about - though I'm bad at EXPRESSING empathy, I think (though I'm not sure) that I FEEL more empathy, especially for suffering, than the average person. (but I'm not actually sure - it's not the kind of thing that people talk about much; I know that I seem to feel more than the incredibly small number of people I've actually talked to about this). When I read about or am told about an injury, for example, I can usually imagine what it felt like (often with vaguely stomach turning results, so I try not to do this...) And when I occasionally realize that in every one of those houses I'm driving by are people living with lives, dreams, hopes, failures, successes, everything, that I can't begin to comprehend, I find it utterly overwhelming and beyond my comprehension. I read about the Civil War because I find stories of battles interesting - I don't care about individual heroics, I want to know about who charged who, who repulsed who, who was tactically brilliant (usually Lee), who blundered (usually whoever is leading the Union) - the overarching currents. But when I visit a battlefield, it's all about the little things I talked about in 3. Who stood here? What happened here? What could it possibly have been like. I stand there and try to sketch out all the parts of it in my head until the feelings almost overwhelm me...and then I move on. And I try not to do that too many times, cause it's a bit too upsetting. ;)
Today, more than anything, I got to see what a difference good weather makes in ... everything. I wasn't upset, and I was having fun and exerting myself, and the result was that my introspection was mostly related to the battle and the events at hand.
I finished up at Antietam at about 2:30, having walked and then driven around the entire battlefield. I hadn't eaten anything since Crackerbarrel, so I wandered into Sharpsburg and stopped at the first place that looked promising: a home made ice cream place. Unfortunately, they only took cash: I had only enough for a "kiddie" size, at a buck fifteen. Fortunately, the "kiddie" size at the place turns out to be about as much ice cream as typically comes in a "Love It" size at Coldstone (I'm not even exaggerating) and the flavor I got - Turtle Cheesecake - had more mix-ins, too. Best lunch ever? Maybe not, but after walking so much, it really hit the spot.
While eating it, I sat down with a map to answer a surprisingly thorny question: where next? I had been thinking of swinging in to middle Virginia and going to Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Wilderness, etc., but the route looked annoying - it just wasn't a very convenient trip from my location, and I decided that, all things considered, I could just as easily hit these places on the way back, or some other time. What I really wanted to do was go to Shiloh, so I started planning out the route that would get me there: 81S, to be exact. So where does that go?
Through the Shenandoah Valley!
On first inspection, the Shenandoah Valley suffers from the worst failure of imagination ever: the Shenandoah River flows through the Shenandoah Valley, flanked by the Shenandoah Mountains; somewhere in there is the town of Shenandoah, and, well, you get the idea. However, I'd driven through the valley once before (last year in April) and knew better: it wasn't a failure of imagination, it was the exact opposite. The Shenandoah is so incredibly beautiful that the mind boggles, and all imagination is otherwise occupied, and so nothing much else can be thought of other than how incredibly beautiful it is.
I don't know what makes it so lovely. Maybe it's the ridges of mountains on either side, or the river snaking back and forth in it's valley, or the way that the clearings around farms make it easy to get sweeping views. But whatever it is, I knew ever since last year that I wanted to come back here. After today, I know that I need to come back here as a separate trip: there are too many things I want to do for the kind of journey I'm currently on. So I decided to just hit a few of the ones I most wanted to do last year. One I did today - the Shenandoah Sky Drive.
Perched atop the first ridge of mountains, all of which is National Park, is a road. For a fee, one can drive on this road as it snakes and switch-backs it's way through the mountains (and occasionally is intersected by other roads) at altitudes generally above 2000 feet, and sometimes above three thousand. Because it follows the ridge, it basically goes northeast/southwest. And I wanted to drive it. So I did - I spent an hour of my drive today up there (I stopped when all the absolutely amazing vistas and views started to lose their magical quality - I didn't want that). It's indescribable. I'd say look at the pictures when I upload them, but from what I saw on my little screen they don't do it justice - things in the background fade out far more than in reality. From the eastern side, the rest of Virginia spreads out, basically flat all the way to the horizon. From the western side, the Shenandoah Valley unfolds and the river meanders, and beyond that ridge after ridge of mountains can be seen (I counted five). Even though I promised myself I wouldn't stop at every outlook...I basically did (though I didn't always get out of the car) because every new one brought a different angle on the scene that revealed some new facet. Meanwhile, winter-bare trees spread up and out and into every fold, deer graze along the side of the road (or, rather, flee in terror when a car approaches), and above it all swoop birds of prey.
See why I want to go back?
Without any particular reason, I settled on the town of Lexington as my goal. I had already mostly made up my mind before I stopped at the Valley's welcome center; my chat with the very nice lady there solidified my decision: I can visit Stonewall Jackson's house, for one (I hadn't even realized it was here when I decided on this destination) and can visit the Natural Bridge Caverns for another. See, the second thing I wanted to do in the Shenandoah was visit some natural caverns. I don't yet know enough about the local geology to know why they formed, but I hope to tomorrow - all I know is that there are a lot of them. I picked the one I did arbitrarily, but the lady told me it was one of the more natural (rather than all fancified and done up) caverns around, and that's just perfect. I love going into caverns, and I haven't in ages, so that's tomorrows activity. That and driving. And Lexington is only about 10 miles from the cavern in question, which is perfect.
On the drive to Lexington, it was that time of evening: phone call time! Today I had a very important one: it's my grandfather's 91st birthday. We had a nice long conversation, which was good, and I once again vowed to call more often (I haven't spoken to him since Christmas, which is simply shameful given his age and the fact that I know he would like to hear from me more often). I WILL keep that promise this time; my goal is at least once a month. That should be easy enough to do...I wrote a big long post about my grandfather on his birthday last year, though, and I find that I have surprisingly little more to say about it. Our relationship was once very close, and then became rocky, and now I find I'm quite happy with it and at peace with it, which is just what I would have wanted. After that, I called mom, and we chatted about nothin' much, and I got off just as I arrived at Lexington (much to my surprise, since I'd zoned out). Dinner was Ruby Tuesdays, hotel is Best Western, and all in all it was a very nice day. I even put Binghamton (mostly) out of my mind - which is probably for the best.
I'm too tired for pictures tonight - but I'll try to get it done in the morning. Until then....
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And for what it's worth, you're technically supposed to find yourself all at once when you go on walkabout. Finding little bits of yourself each day isn't the right way to do it at all ;)
On walking: when I saw you wrote that in, I did a little googling. I knew the average American didn't walk worth a shit, but the numbers really are rather staggering:
"One PhD student at Stanford (Chelsea Clinton's university) told me that a recent survey showed that the average American now walked less than 400 yards a day, and that almost every journey, no matter how short, involved the use of a car."
That's two avenues...the average American walks less than two avenues a day! That thoroughly disgusted me, but definitely didn't surprise me...few people outside of any place worth living (read: New York City) can say they've got everything they could need within walking distance...
*sigh*