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50@50 – Gettysburg, PA

I wasn’t planning to even go to Gettysburg, much less write about it.  “No National Parks” I said (though technically, it’s a national military park). Not much of a civil war buff, I thought to myself, “I’ve visited Vicksburg; they’re both pivotal civil war burgs, how different can they be?”  I first passed through Gettysburg on my way back from visiting the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, and I realized I couldn’t be more wrong. I had to come back. This essay is less about how the land shapes culture, but how the land’s position and topography helped to shape events that has impacted not only local, but national culture.

April 2011 marks the beginning of a four year national commemoration of America’s civil war. That is its official title, though regionally, we’re still struggling with what to call it: the Civil War, the War Between the States, even the War of Northern Aggression (Port Hudson State Historic Site). New technologies are enabling us to learn more and to revisit long-held beliefs, analysis and theories.  A lover of historic detail, I admit I can only handle so much in the guns, bullets and cavalry department, so I budgeted an hour to breeze through the exhibits.

We all know why the civil war began – to end slavery – right?  A placard provided a lightening bolt of clarity to my assumption.  The first reason was to preserve the union – the federal government asserted that the states did not have the constitutional right to secede. The second reason was economic and political self determination – the strength of the south’s economy and political clout was based on slave labor. The third reason, (and to me the most profound) was to define what it means to be an American. Slavery was integral to all of those reasons, but not the definitive cause of the war. Am I the only one that missed this in 8^th grade history, or have our textbooks become so politically right as to obscure unpleasant (and downright shameful) realities of our past?

Three hours later, I emerge transformed – ready to explore the physical landscape so completely brought to life in the museum’s depiction of the battles and all the human stories and artifacts.

The “High Water Mark of the Rebellion”. – National Park Service

Three hiking trails lie within the park and can be covered in their entirety or in part.  I hiked the Cemetery Ridge Trail, 1.5 miles long, which covers the area defended by Union soldiers.  While mooing along the self-guided auto trail, I also trekked various portions of the longer 9.5-mile Billy Yank Trail that encompasses a large portion of the southern battlefield.  There is also a 3-mile trail called the Johnny Reb trail.[1] The smooth path is hilly in places. Walking the trails gave me a richer experience, obscuring, in the troughs, some of the modern neighborhoods and traffic surrounding the battlefield. It enabled me to get a sense of troop movement; I was awestruck that 50,000 people were killed over the course of three days on such a relatively small area of land.

For the townspeople, the aftermath lasted for months.  I found myself reflecting upon the hardiness and compassion of the women, and men, who, left with the litter of death, tried to save the dying.  In modern times, such death and destruction can only be compared to horrific events such as the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, or the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and Japan. Would I have the capacity to handle the adversity of the Haitians with as much grace?  Would my art of composing music even matter?  I decide YES, absolutely!  Art matters and needs to be expressed even more in times of crisis.

Hiking, putting one foot in front of the other, allows us to experience our world tactilely, feeling the dirt, smelling the flora, hearing the birds and the wind.  Whether on a short paved path or a rocky trail, hiking optimizes our lungs, our blood flow – to our brains as well as to our bodies.  It enables us to open our minds and contemplate our world, our place in it, and our contribution to it. As I approach the halfway point of my blog, the importance of this endeavor becomes more apparent.