Walkabout, Some More
Apr. 20th, 2009 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthThis'll be one of the last posts; tomorrow, I'll be heading home and on Wednesday, the exterminators will be coming...and then things will get funny, because I've been giving a lot of thought to...stuff. :)
The weather got gorgeous, and I headed out to the Wilderness Battlefield. This is perhaps one of the most muddled battlefields there is; the entire conflict, which took place in May, 1864. I don't really have the energy to sum up the history right now. One side affect of the nature of the landscape, though, as hinted by the name (Wilderness) is that it's a very pretty place. The big event on Friday had to do with the dog.
On Thursday, I finally picked up a box of dog treats, which I'd been planning to do all trip, with the plan that on Friday I would start working with her on "come." Jonie is very poorly trained - she knows several commands (sit, come, down...) but she generally responds to them only when she feels like. After incessant work, I've gotten her to obey sit the majority of the time, but the others she views as purely optional. On the assumption that I can't really let her off leash more until she gets better at "come," I thought it'd make a good next step. Thus, for the first half hour that we were out, I kept her on leash and we practiced the command, and when she came, she got a cookie. She wasn't that well behaved, but it seemed like she was figuring it out, so I took her off leash...and she bolted. Too many smells, too many distractions, too many squirrels. I enlisted the help of the first person who came my way, a friendly lady with two dogs, and she and I started wandering the forest together; we told the only other people that we saw, a large family, about the situation, and they agreed to keep their eyes open. After about half an hour of looping the forest, Jo and I got back to where we started...and discovered that the family had my dog. So in the end, it was all no harm, no foul, but it was still a frustrating and not particularly fun experience.
After that, she didn't get to go off leash any more, but I decided to finish the hike I was just starting when the annoyance took place. She was very badly behaved the whole time, and I very much irritated, but we kept working on "come" ...she just doesn't care. Sigh. As soon as I have the money, I'm getting a dog trainer and a human trainer, to fix both of us.
Another thing that I realized is that when I'm juggling the dog, it's much harder to appreciate the battlefield. This is part of why I don't really feel like talking about Wilderness. I resolved that I would not take her with me the next day, and tried to keep my cool.
When I posted on Friday morning, it was fully my intention to launch into a long discussion of the anniversary, a very important one in my life, commemorated by the 17th of April. I'd spent much of the proceeding week thinking about it. But when the day actually came, apparently I was done, and I had nothing to say, so though I was going to write a whole bunch about it, instead I think I'll leave it short. Three years ago on April 17th, 2006, I broke up with my fiancee and therefore changed the direction of my life. Everything that's happened since then would have unfolded very differently if I hadn't done so, and it's funny to think in retrospect how things might have been, what I might be doing or might have done. Though we didn't stop trying to fix things for another approximately 6 weeks, once the break up was fully concluded I thought of the 17th as the end. Thus ended 5 years of what was, for the most part, a happy and satisfying relationship. It's very strange to think that now I've been single for more than half as long as I was in that relationship. I wonder what comes next?
Abandoning the pup, on the nicest day so far this year I headed to Spotsylvania. This battle, which took place mere days after the Wilderness, could almost be considered part of the same battle. At Wilderness, the Confederate troops under Lee managed to defeat a superior Union force, but Grant, by then in charge of the Union armies, knew that Lee didn't have enough troops to really stop Grant from doing what he wanted, so instead of retreating as his predecessors had done, Grant simply continued advancing by moving a little to the east around the Confederate forces. This means that a few days later, there was another battle.
I mentioned that at Wilderness and Chancellorsville, one of the most horrifying things of the war happened - the burning of the wounded in the woods - and that the only mitigating factor was that human agency didn't play a part. Spotsylvania has what is perhaps the worst incident that DOES involve human agency. The Union troops attacked a strong Confederate position, and made some in roads, but the Confederates held and held. The result was that, regardless of the orders of superiors, an attack continued long after there was any point to it, with Union troops and Confederate troops facing off at a spot on the lines that came to be known as the "Bloody Angle" in a driving rain for 20 hours. The only thing that separated the two forces was a wood wall built as part of the trenches, and the troops went back and forth, climbing the wall to shoot each other and stab each other through the chinks in the wall. All the while, the rain fell, and turned the ground beneath them to mud, and the bodies of the wounded and dead stacked up in the soup beneath their feet until the bodies were 5 or 6 deep and the wounded drowned. It's as close to becoming nothing but ferocious beasts as these men could have become. There's a lot of valor, though, too - for example, men would climb the wall, and their companions would pass up loaded weapons, and they'd fire into the Confederates until they were killed (which didn't take long) and then another man would climb up and it would continue. And all of this was done to take a position that Lee was planning to abandon - and did abandon as soon as he completed a secondary line of battle about a mile behind this first. A monument at this site indicated that the unit involved suffered almost 75% casualties. Pretty horrifying stuff.
And completely impossible to reconcile. I stood on the slopes over which the Union charged on the most beautiful day of the year thus far (the only one I should have visited in the rain!) and tried to imagine what it could possibly have been like, but I stalled immediately, because I realized that if I put myself, where I was standing, in the action, I'd be dead already. To push the analogy farther, I took cover (in this instance, behind a monument, which granted wouldn't have been there) and tried again...but it was very hard.
One of the awesome things about Spotsylvania is the extent to which the trench lines have been preserved, both Union and Confederate. Comparing it to trenches dug earlier in the war, it's amazing to see how far the art of digging had come and how important it had become to the war effort. At Spotsylvania, it's crystal clear the seeds of the kind of battle that predominates in World War 1 (with the main difference being the addition of machine guns, which make what during the Civil War were nearly-impregnable fortifications into actually impregnable fortifications.)
Another nice thing about the battlefield was the trail. There was a loop all the way around the battlefield, which I happily embarked on, and without the dog I was able to concentrate on figuring out what happened where, and all in all I'd say my visit there was one of the more satisfying stops of my trip.
On Sunday, I didn't feel like doing much of anything, and so I just drove into Fredericksburg and toured the parts of the battlefield that I hadn't been to before. While doing so, I discovered Chatham, which was the Union headquarters there, which is about as lovely an 18th/19th century manor as I've ever seen - it was well worth a visit. But there wasn't much on my mind, and there wasn't much else to say.
And then there was today. In a driving rain, I decided not to do anything but push on towards where I wanted to go tomorrow - Longwood Garden, which is supposed to be lovely, and is outside of Philly. Assuming the weather is okay, I'll go there tomorrow, and then...I'll go home. Weird.
With all the mind wandering I've done this week, I've let myself think about things a bit differently than I have up to now, and I've come up with a strange and novel solution to a problem that I'd been trying to pretend didn't really exist. See, no matter what happens, the apartment in which I live will ultimately get bed bugs again. That's how this works, and why it's such a serious problem. Furthermore, no matter what I do, I'm going to have to quarantine my belongings when I leave. Thus, the more I think about it, the more I think that I shouldn't wait to start this process: the sooner I isolate my belongings, the sooner I can get them back again. Why even unpack everything? It's already all packed! Thus, as overwhelming as the thought is, when I get home, I'm going to get a couple quotes on storage, and I'm gonna hire some people to take all of crap out of my living room and into storage, where it will stay for at least a year.
This, then, tied in to some other funny stuff. One of the things that's been on my mind a lot is how nice it can be in the country. I love living in cities, but it's really wonderful to have a nice, quiet place to bask in the sunshine surrounded by nature. My mother has wanted a country house for a while, but she hasn't been willing to put the effort in to get the process started, she needs a push, and so I've decided to push - because if she has a place, I can spend time there, and it won't cost me much, if anything.
With my belongings in storage for at least a year, I can think of no reason that I should stay in my current apartment once the lease runs out. I can move to some place smaller and cheaper - a studio. My life will be considerably less cluttered.
Meanwhile, sooner or later, my belongings can come out of storage. But at that point, I don't have to fit it into my new, small studio - instead, I can take the stuff up to mom's, thus creating the largest concentration of books (hers plus mine) in the general area, creating a black hole, and bringing about the end of the universe.
By moving into a smaller and therefore cheaper place, I'll be even better able to start saving for my own place.
The problem with all of this? It seems like a pretty solid plan, I think it's probably what I'll have to do to deal with the bed bug situation...but I hate waiting, and I can't get moving on large parts of the plan until the fall, when the time comes to find a new apartment. And I hate waiting.
In truth, there's been a lot on my mind, but I still just don't have that much energy, and if I try to write everything into this post, it won't get done. :)
The weather got gorgeous, and I headed out to the Wilderness Battlefield. This is perhaps one of the most muddled battlefields there is; the entire conflict, which took place in May, 1864. I don't really have the energy to sum up the history right now. One side affect of the nature of the landscape, though, as hinted by the name (Wilderness) is that it's a very pretty place. The big event on Friday had to do with the dog.
On Thursday, I finally picked up a box of dog treats, which I'd been planning to do all trip, with the plan that on Friday I would start working with her on "come." Jonie is very poorly trained - she knows several commands (sit, come, down...) but she generally responds to them only when she feels like. After incessant work, I've gotten her to obey sit the majority of the time, but the others she views as purely optional. On the assumption that I can't really let her off leash more until she gets better at "come," I thought it'd make a good next step. Thus, for the first half hour that we were out, I kept her on leash and we practiced the command, and when she came, she got a cookie. She wasn't that well behaved, but it seemed like she was figuring it out, so I took her off leash...and she bolted. Too many smells, too many distractions, too many squirrels. I enlisted the help of the first person who came my way, a friendly lady with two dogs, and she and I started wandering the forest together; we told the only other people that we saw, a large family, about the situation, and they agreed to keep their eyes open. After about half an hour of looping the forest, Jo and I got back to where we started...and discovered that the family had my dog. So in the end, it was all no harm, no foul, but it was still a frustrating and not particularly fun experience.
After that, she didn't get to go off leash any more, but I decided to finish the hike I was just starting when the annoyance took place. She was very badly behaved the whole time, and I very much irritated, but we kept working on "come" ...she just doesn't care. Sigh. As soon as I have the money, I'm getting a dog trainer and a human trainer, to fix both of us.
Another thing that I realized is that when I'm juggling the dog, it's much harder to appreciate the battlefield. This is part of why I don't really feel like talking about Wilderness. I resolved that I would not take her with me the next day, and tried to keep my cool.
When I posted on Friday morning, it was fully my intention to launch into a long discussion of the anniversary, a very important one in my life, commemorated by the 17th of April. I'd spent much of the proceeding week thinking about it. But when the day actually came, apparently I was done, and I had nothing to say, so though I was going to write a whole bunch about it, instead I think I'll leave it short. Three years ago on April 17th, 2006, I broke up with my fiancee and therefore changed the direction of my life. Everything that's happened since then would have unfolded very differently if I hadn't done so, and it's funny to think in retrospect how things might have been, what I might be doing or might have done. Though we didn't stop trying to fix things for another approximately 6 weeks, once the break up was fully concluded I thought of the 17th as the end. Thus ended 5 years of what was, for the most part, a happy and satisfying relationship. It's very strange to think that now I've been single for more than half as long as I was in that relationship. I wonder what comes next?
Abandoning the pup, on the nicest day so far this year I headed to Spotsylvania. This battle, which took place mere days after the Wilderness, could almost be considered part of the same battle. At Wilderness, the Confederate troops under Lee managed to defeat a superior Union force, but Grant, by then in charge of the Union armies, knew that Lee didn't have enough troops to really stop Grant from doing what he wanted, so instead of retreating as his predecessors had done, Grant simply continued advancing by moving a little to the east around the Confederate forces. This means that a few days later, there was another battle.
I mentioned that at Wilderness and Chancellorsville, one of the most horrifying things of the war happened - the burning of the wounded in the woods - and that the only mitigating factor was that human agency didn't play a part. Spotsylvania has what is perhaps the worst incident that DOES involve human agency. The Union troops attacked a strong Confederate position, and made some in roads, but the Confederates held and held. The result was that, regardless of the orders of superiors, an attack continued long after there was any point to it, with Union troops and Confederate troops facing off at a spot on the lines that came to be known as the "Bloody Angle" in a driving rain for 20 hours. The only thing that separated the two forces was a wood wall built as part of the trenches, and the troops went back and forth, climbing the wall to shoot each other and stab each other through the chinks in the wall. All the while, the rain fell, and turned the ground beneath them to mud, and the bodies of the wounded and dead stacked up in the soup beneath their feet until the bodies were 5 or 6 deep and the wounded drowned. It's as close to becoming nothing but ferocious beasts as these men could have become. There's a lot of valor, though, too - for example, men would climb the wall, and their companions would pass up loaded weapons, and they'd fire into the Confederates until they were killed (which didn't take long) and then another man would climb up and it would continue. And all of this was done to take a position that Lee was planning to abandon - and did abandon as soon as he completed a secondary line of battle about a mile behind this first. A monument at this site indicated that the unit involved suffered almost 75% casualties. Pretty horrifying stuff.
And completely impossible to reconcile. I stood on the slopes over which the Union charged on the most beautiful day of the year thus far (the only one I should have visited in the rain!) and tried to imagine what it could possibly have been like, but I stalled immediately, because I realized that if I put myself, where I was standing, in the action, I'd be dead already. To push the analogy farther, I took cover (in this instance, behind a monument, which granted wouldn't have been there) and tried again...but it was very hard.
One of the awesome things about Spotsylvania is the extent to which the trench lines have been preserved, both Union and Confederate. Comparing it to trenches dug earlier in the war, it's amazing to see how far the art of digging had come and how important it had become to the war effort. At Spotsylvania, it's crystal clear the seeds of the kind of battle that predominates in World War 1 (with the main difference being the addition of machine guns, which make what during the Civil War were nearly-impregnable fortifications into actually impregnable fortifications.)
Another nice thing about the battlefield was the trail. There was a loop all the way around the battlefield, which I happily embarked on, and without the dog I was able to concentrate on figuring out what happened where, and all in all I'd say my visit there was one of the more satisfying stops of my trip.
On Sunday, I didn't feel like doing much of anything, and so I just drove into Fredericksburg and toured the parts of the battlefield that I hadn't been to before. While doing so, I discovered Chatham, which was the Union headquarters there, which is about as lovely an 18th/19th century manor as I've ever seen - it was well worth a visit. But there wasn't much on my mind, and there wasn't much else to say.
And then there was today. In a driving rain, I decided not to do anything but push on towards where I wanted to go tomorrow - Longwood Garden, which is supposed to be lovely, and is outside of Philly. Assuming the weather is okay, I'll go there tomorrow, and then...I'll go home. Weird.
With all the mind wandering I've done this week, I've let myself think about things a bit differently than I have up to now, and I've come up with a strange and novel solution to a problem that I'd been trying to pretend didn't really exist. See, no matter what happens, the apartment in which I live will ultimately get bed bugs again. That's how this works, and why it's such a serious problem. Furthermore, no matter what I do, I'm going to have to quarantine my belongings when I leave. Thus, the more I think about it, the more I think that I shouldn't wait to start this process: the sooner I isolate my belongings, the sooner I can get them back again. Why even unpack everything? It's already all packed! Thus, as overwhelming as the thought is, when I get home, I'm going to get a couple quotes on storage, and I'm gonna hire some people to take all of crap out of my living room and into storage, where it will stay for at least a year.
This, then, tied in to some other funny stuff. One of the things that's been on my mind a lot is how nice it can be in the country. I love living in cities, but it's really wonderful to have a nice, quiet place to bask in the sunshine surrounded by nature. My mother has wanted a country house for a while, but she hasn't been willing to put the effort in to get the process started, she needs a push, and so I've decided to push - because if she has a place, I can spend time there, and it won't cost me much, if anything.
With my belongings in storage for at least a year, I can think of no reason that I should stay in my current apartment once the lease runs out. I can move to some place smaller and cheaper - a studio. My life will be considerably less cluttered.
Meanwhile, sooner or later, my belongings can come out of storage. But at that point, I don't have to fit it into my new, small studio - instead, I can take the stuff up to mom's, thus creating the largest concentration of books (hers plus mine) in the general area, creating a black hole, and bringing about the end of the universe.
By moving into a smaller and therefore cheaper place, I'll be even better able to start saving for my own place.
The problem with all of this? It seems like a pretty solid plan, I think it's probably what I'll have to do to deal with the bed bug situation...but I hate waiting, and I can't get moving on large parts of the plan until the fall, when the time comes to find a new apartment. And I hate waiting.
In truth, there's been a lot on my mind, but I still just don't have that much energy, and if I try to write everything into this post, it won't get done. :)
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 03:19 am (UTC)Oh, and Spotsylvania? Egads. I can't even think about that too long or I feel ill. *shudder*
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 10:53 am (UTC)I'm a little worried about living without my stuff, but I have high hopes, primarily because I did it before - what I'm doing, after a fashion, is imitating when I moved to Japan, except this is a bit less extreme since I'll still have my furniture - at least some of it (I have this idea that I'll accidentally leave all the book cases, and it feels like it'd be very depressing to have empty bookcases looming over me...). It also raises some funny questions about some of the furniture - as in, what will be the ultimate fate of my couches and bed? Since I'm thinking of moving to tiny apartment land, I will probably not keep them - but all of this is my problem. Once I've decided to do something, I'm ready to go and do it! And there's nothing to do until October...
I'm glad to hear that you like the plan, though - so far I've only talked to mom, and even though she liked it, I wasn't sure it was a good plan...
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 10:21 pm (UTC)Phone: "Hi, we have a black lab here with your phone number."
Me: "Oh! That must be Jonie... where are you?"
Phone: "We're at the Wilderness Battlefield, you know, just off the road"
I didn't really know where that was, but I gave them your cell # (as you know) and hoped you'd find Jonie eventually...
no subject
Date: 2009-04-22 10:49 am (UTC)Sigh.
And it's in Virginia, about 15 miles west of Fredericksburg, or about 50 miles southwest of DC. :)