Sesquicentennial

Dodging A Bullet

Counting History

I love celebrating a landmark date in time, but I prefer to dodge the crowds that follow the course of history.  It’s the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s greatest battles, not just this year, but last year and next year and all of the early teens of this century.  As a nation, we celebrate each of the two hundred seventy-two words that President Abraham Lincoln spoke in remembrance of the more than fifty thousand people who fell victim to the shelling and shooting across the Pennsylvania acreage.  On average, each word represents one hundred eighty-eight soldiers who fell upon the hallowed ground of Gettysburg.  In fact, even the current population of the Adams county seat could multiply by six times and still not equal that number of soldiers who fell on the battlefield between July 1 through 3, 1863.  The small town grew twenty times its size during the conflict and forty times its size during the 150th commemoration of the event.

For me, I do not do well with crowds of that size.  Not that I mind Generals McClellan and Lee showing up with the number of troops they did, but to soak in the solemnity of the massive tragedy and the scale of despair during this year’s memorial of the circumstances of the bloodiest battle on American soil, I wanted solitude, tranquility, and silence.  No doubt, so do many others, but thousands of Civil War reenactors stomp across the Peach Orchard, across the Emmitsburg Road, and across the High Water Mark with cannon fire recreating the smoky haze of the original fog of war.  Plus the throngs of historical tourists raise the amount of congestion, the price of hotel rooms, and the wait times at every viewpoint, vista, and vantage point around the battlefield.  I just see the experience (and want to see the experience) differently.

Perfect Planning

When I plan to visit Gettysburg National Battlefield, I keep in mind my financial parameters and patience for mobs, both of which are low.  My first decision, besides the desire to just be there in person, keeps me away from the key reenactment weekends on either side of the sesquicentennial.  In so doing, I meet the expectation of obtaining a reasonable rate at nearby lodging.  I arrive on Monday and depart on Wednesday and spend from just after sunrise to just after sunset exploring nearly every crevice of the terrain.  Mother Nature understands my expectations for an ideal experience and keeps enough clouds in the sky to keep me cool, yet holds off on the afternoon rain shower until I am tucked inside the Visitor’s Center for a late lunch.  I subsequently miss the packs of bikers who will arrive on Thursday, and the sequester that impacts the National Park System allows a reprieve at the numerically date-significant site.  I did it, though, I dodged them all.

With all of the stressful factors out of my scope, I absorb every moment on the battlefield.  I feel the wind dabbing at my face as I survey the opposing battle lines across the grassy horizon.  I envision thousands of men shoulder to shoulder approaching, sweating, in the sweltering summer sun, and how blessed I am to be standing in the shade of passing clouds.  As I climb the paved hill towards Little Round Top, I imagine how the nearly exhausted soldiers from Alabama climbed and clamored over boulders as gunfire rained down upon them after marching through the night and into the morning to meet their deaths on the Union left flank.  As the glow of sunset streams through the broken clouds, I wonder how the cannon fire illuminated ahead of the infantry fighting for each step forward, forcing them backwards, or worse, into broken, shredded casualties.  And in the quiet of the crowds I successfully dodge, I imagine the crying, screaming, and moaning of the dying men strewn in all directions, because I don’t want to remember how hard it was for me to navigate these fields, but how hard it was for them to survive them.

Remembrance Day (Part 1)

 

 

An Education at Gettysburg

Phases of a Degree

When I began college, I knew the most basic commands of MS-DOS, but everyday life involved card catalogs, typewriters, spiral notebooks and correction fluid.  During my second stint in the post-secondary world, I utilized floppy discs in a clunky desktop PC to compose my term papers, but the printed dot-matrix results are barely legible and research still entirely occurred within the four walls of a library.  During the third, and successfully final, home stretch towards my twenty-year bachelor’s degree, my pretty yellow laptop and the world wide web allowed me to understand cloud formations, examine the nuances of the Second World War, recreate the development of Latin America, follow the expansion of the America West, and peek inside the history of a national park from my own home.  Now that’s progress.

I never understood the passion college graduates retain for their alma maters.  Paying for college always registered to me as a business transaction: my money for an education.  The schools I attended never stirred my enthusiasm for any given mascot or fight song or athletic conference affiliation.  When life would get off track, I’d splash water on my face and get myself back in school, whatever school best suited my academic needs.  My focus had always been on the obtainment of knowledge, the securing of a degree, and moving on to the next great adventure, not celebrating the four-year experience, but the four-year achievement.  It just took eighteen years longer than I expected, and when the diploma arrived in the mail, neither the school nor I owed each other anything more.

Offline Classes

In my academic pursuits, the last thirty semester hours brought me the most joy.  My age, my motivation, my determination, and my discipline had all seen noted increases.  Taking classes online felt supremely comfortable, and I paced myself so the final semester ended with my diploma being awarded less than twenty-fours before my first-born graduated high school.  My self-propelled race to the finish line kept my class loads, my evenings and weekends, and my daily schedule full.  For the final five semesters, I never spoke in person to my classmates, I never visited the campus library, and only once did I meet one of my professors.  So for that one occasion, a class that could easily be considered the high-water mark of my degree, I met my professor at a small copse of trees on a historic battlefield in Pennsylvania.

For one semester hour, or one Remembrance Day weekend, I bundle up in my warmest winter wear, avoid any measurable snowfall and walk in the footsteps of the soldiers who spent the first three days of July 1863 fighting for the future of the United States.  On the tranquil hills that now remain, with monuments and markers across every sightline, I emerge from my laptop education and absorb the stories, the strategic decisions, the advances and retreats, and the fight for the rumored depot of shoes that were said to have been stored somewhere near this conflux south of Carlisle.  But neither the Southern Rebels nor the Northern Yankees found this to be a place to rest their weary feet, this place instead burst alive with combat and cannon fire, smoke and sacrifice.  I may have only needed one hour of academic credit to complete my online degree, and despite the distant travel, the cost, and the commitment, I still believe I have it far easier at this national battlefield than the combatants who came before me.  The tiniest fragment of my lengthy degree pursuits could not have been complete, or as meaningful, without the short time I spent on Little Round Top viewing the entire placid fields to the north, which meant so much to our nation nearly 150 years ago.  I guess I owe my academic institution a debt of gratitude for my one day of education at Gettysburg.

Chocolate World

Unaccompanied Minor

I recall the first time Son #1 flew solo on an airplane.  Well-traveled and independent, no anxiety preceded his flight (well, maybe a little on my part) and he boarded his flight in Baltimore headed to St. Louis where his grandparents would sign for him like a fine piece of carry-on luggage.  Over the years, he would travel without me many times, and Son #2 would follow with an equal lack of trepidation.  My expert travelers moved through security seamlessly even when they reached the age that they didn’t need their mom slowing them down.  How I miss their childish outlook.

I appreciate that these guys figured out that the ability to move smoothly from point A in terminal C to point B in terminal A granted them the privilege of seeing more of the world than sometimes I could even show them.  It made Son #1’s five-hour solo flight from Florida to California flawless and the school trip to Italy only natural.  While not quite a jet setter, he knew how to read airport monitors for gate information, how to board smoothly, how to properly stow his carry-on bags (a skill many adults cannot manage), and even coached and counseled other less-courageous unaccompanied minors.  Son #2 mastered the same skills, and learned how to score extra peanuts from the flight attendants.  Little boys grow up fast.

A Little Taste

Safely on his way to St. Louis, Son #2 and I drive on to Hershey, Pennsylvania in our rental car showing a mere fifteen miles on the odometer.  While the town of Hershey offers a myriad of activities and sites, some of which are candy-based and even more of the non-sweet variety, when traveling with a four-year-old, the focus lies strictly in the chocolate.  To keep the experience on par with the attention span of a little boy, we ride through the make-believe factory and receive the complimentary miniature candy bar of the town’s namesake.  As we exit the dark-ride style attraction with our milk-style chocolate, we receive word that Son #1 arrives safely in Missouri.

Like every well-themed attraction, we dump into a gift shop featuring all things Hershey, Reese’s, Kit-Kat and Kisses adorned, as well as plenty of chocolate delights in all sizes and quantities – little boy heaven.  With photo ops, food, and five-year-old fun, there is no reason to explore any additional parts of this adorable town.  Everything a child’s imagination invents exists in this warehouse-sized store.  On the drive back to DC, even the exceptional sugar content couldn’t keep a little person awake after a full three hours of chocolate fantasy overload.  Fully spoiled by his bite-sized adventure, these hours of candied adventure pale in comparison to three-weeks of spoiling Son #1 receives at the hands of his grandparents.  Nevertheless, on this day, I think of my distance from Son #1, while Son #2 remembers Chocolate World as a child’s chocolate nirvana.  And I remember their distant childhood as a parent’s heaven.