Gettysburg

It was a long drive out to Gettysburg from Lancaster, but everyone ought to visit the site of the famous battle at least once in a lifetime.

Like most battlefields, a kind of hush falls over this one.  It's silent, still, set apart.  One hundred and fifty years ago, these broad fields were the scene of three full days of unspeakable violence.  Somehow that history makes this corner of the world exempt from all future chaos and clamor.  It's a place of peace forevermore.

It would take hours, perhaps days, to do a trip to Gettysburg right.  I only had a few hours to give it, again with two little girls in tow.  There's something deeply moving about the place.  It's not pretty.  It's not really all that interesting; you hear the same events described over and over.  It's the solemnity of Gettysburg that speaks to visitors.  Is it possible that the human spirit craves moments of solemnity?

This is the Brian farmhouse; the barn is shown in the previous photo.  One of the striking things about Gettysburg is seeing how the war spilled over into the most intimate and personal spaces of standersby: homes, stables, gardens, orchards.  War is always a violation of civilian space, I'm sure, but the invasiveness of it seems all the more shocking when the countryside and farms look so much like the ones I knew in childhood.

Recounting the Battle of Gettysburg is beyond the scope of this blog.  Our task is mainly just to explore scenic, forgotten, or historic sites.  Skip the organized tours and walk around the battlefield on foot.  The visitor's center and museum is inexpensive and well worth a visit.  In one of the exhibits, I came across this 1850s drawing of John Brown, the militant white abolitionist who started a slave uprising and was later hanged for it.  He's got a rifle in one hand and a Bible in the other.  The old stone chapel at Penn State Mount Alto--just across the mountain from Gettysburg--is where John Brown taught Sunday school while he was living in the region and planning the uprising at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).