Gettysburg

Last Monday was the perfect day for adventuring. Most everyone else was at work or honoring the Day of Atonement. It was also a splendidly crisp and clear early autumn day.

i waited for rush hour to be over (read: i slept until 9 because why not it’s a three day weekend and i’m not setting an alarm on a day i don’t need to!) and then got on the road, three times. (Just one of those days where i kept forgetting things.)

Once on Route 30 West, i popped in my Gettysburg Road Mix CD and started jamming out as i drove. Round about Lancaster, this song called “Your Rocky Spine” comes on. It’s a quality song, very mellow and aching. (i actually think that having a CD player in my car has allowed me more time to listen to music and in turn has improved my taste… i have wished several times over the last few weeks that Jeff and i were friends so i could make him a CD proving this fact. Oh well, he’d probably still say my taste sucked.) And i’m dangling my arm out the window and breathing in the rushing air as i do.

This song is lulling me into a contemplative state and i think… damn, i’d forgotten that autumn in Pennsylvania has these distinctive smells. You can smell sweet gum, earth, corn, hay, and [i swear] the coming snow. These smells are rushing over me and in my head i’m naming them, naming them as i whisper the lyrics of this gingerly possessive song, remembering each one… blueberries, bonfires, fertilizer, apples, hickory nuts, Ramen noodles…


Ramen noodles?


Where did that thought come from?

i’m jerked from my thoughts and my song, and i look off to the south and sure enough, there’s a Nissin plant out there on the rolling hills east of Lancaster, PA, home of the amish and the Dutch home cookin’.

Anyway, i drove through York and on to Gettysburg for my first look at the battlefield since I was 10 years old.

i went through the museum but didn’t have the patience to sit through the multimedia presentation. i was anxious to see the battlefield that my mother swears is haunted.

The driving tour is self-guided and spans a much broader area than i imagined. The battle ranged from north to east to south of the town of Gettysburg, but thankfully left the town pretty much unscathed.

The first place i stopped was meant to be the last, but it wasn’t until i had seen everything else that i really understood why. It was the Gettysburg National Cemetery. There are many people who have been buried here SINCE the Civil War, so it is not exclusively for those who died in this battle, or even this war. But most of the unknown soldiers and many of the identified Union soldiers are, in fact, interred here. And of course, it is breathtaking in a morbid way…

i think this one stands out as one of my best photos

This was also (and i didn’t know this) the site of the Gettysburg Address, the occasion of which was to dedicate this cemetery. More specifically, the memorial in the center was where he stood.

From there i headed into the town toward the northern front. In so doing i was absolutely charmed by the city [town] itself. So delightful… it’s sad how many people miss it in their battlefield crawl.

the square... "downtown" Gettysburg, and typical of small town Pennsylvania

From there i drove along Cemetery Ridge, the high ground held by the Confederates through most of the battle… and the monuments along that part of the drive are for the southern states, though their monuments are smaller because not a lot of southern states have cared to put money into remembering Civil War battles they lost… (though who really lost is a ridiculous question if you count men instead of ground… 28,000 confederates and 23,000 Union…)

canons on Cemetery Ridge

Virginia Monument

The Virginia Monument stands at the site of Pickett’s Charge, a cavalry move that pretty well ended it for the Rebels that day (and arguably… the War?) Sitting atop it is General Lee (my kin!) and engaved on the bottom is “Virginia to her sons at Gettysburg.”

The observation tower is eight flights up and offers a great view of the southern Gettysburg sites. In this one you can see Little Round Top and the Rose farm just below it.

Once i got to Little Round Top, a name i had heard many times, i learned that it was a stronghold for the Union sharpshooters, and that Confederate sharpshooters did comparatively poorly from their position down in the Valley, specifically Devil’s Den, a rocky outcrop visible on the far left of this photo. The Valley itself, now called the Valley of Death, is where a lot of those 50,000 soldiers fell, in particular the Wheatfield just beyond the far right of this photo.


As an aside… Devil’s Den is the only thing i remember from my first visit here. Climbing on the rocks was fun… both times.

The last stop on my trip was the Pennsylvania Memorial… the grandest of all the states’ memorials here on the battlefield, and dear to my heart for obvious reasons. It was getting late by the time i got here, around 5pm or so, and the light was a little tricky to get right. Also, though it was a slow day as far as people went, i was by no means the only on here, so i had to be patient to get a shot without anyone in it. i shot it from many different angles, but can’t decide on my favorite, so, here’s a decent one…

Around the base are the names of every soldier from Pennsylvania who fought here. A few…