N39.059946°, W78.139887°
Antietam battlefield is beautiful. I went in knowing that it was the bloodiest single day of fighting the US has ever experienced, Tet and D-Day and all not holding a candle to this one strip of hills in Maryland.
Ashley Dunbar McMullen took me to Antietam. Technically, she swooped me up to Gettysburg first, which I had planned on passing through the day before. Do you know about Google maps? I use it exclusively. When it loses GPS, it re-routes you upon regaining signal. So if you choose a different variant of the route, it will place you on its preferred route without telling you. So my plans were thwarted by a hilly countryside and a general incompetence. She got me to Gettysburg to get my NPS passport stamp.
We drove to Antietam, gabbing all the way, being judgy judgers and gossiping about people we hadn't seen in years. You know the type of conversation, even if you weren't there. It was old friends getting mad at things that happened eons ago, talking smack about teachers and weirdos from the halcyon time before moving apart. I loved it. And it consumes the drive right up until we pulled into the Antietam National Historic Battlefield parking lot. I was not prepared.
"Hold on, let me just like . . . I don't know. I'm not in the proper frame to be discussing this place."
Ashley gave me a funny look and just let me have a minute. I don't know. It wasn't right, going in high on silliness.
We walked through the doors, I got my stamps, and we waited for the ranger talk upstairs. There's a nearly 200° view of the battlefield's major landmarks from upstairs. Of course, the area would have been significantly denuded (Thanks Helga) during the battle, and this place would have been an incredible vantage. As it was, we could see the steeple near where McClellan sat and watched his men get cut to pieces. We could see the end of bloody lane, where five hundred Confederates held against two thousand advancing Yanks for hours. We could see the trees that marked the edge of a cornfield where 2,500 men bled to death over the course of one September day a hundred fifty years ago.
The battle itself is fairly simple: Lee, just as always, positioned his troops better than his opposition. Stonewall Jackson, just as always, impressed his enemies and generally made everything much easier for Lee by just getting things done. Burnsides, just as you'd expect, spent the day combing out his beard and not getting his troops slaughtered on a terrible order. And McClellan, though you may not expect it, failed to take advantage of his opponent's inferior numbers, and didn't push his advantages when he finally had them. Maybe you did expect that, in which case, your pattern recognition is at least strong enough to make you the next general of the Army of the Potomac.
Regardless, the battle was fought to a draw, and exacted terrible losses on both sides.
When Ashley and I went through Bloody Lane, the sunken farm road in which do many lost their lives, Ashley exclaimed, "My gosh! Imagine sitting here and over that hill right there, there's all of a sudden Union troops pouring over the crest at you! I hadn't thought of that until the ranger said it: that's what makes this battle so awful. You feel like it's open and you can see everything, and all of a sudden there's men attacking you out of nowhere."
"Yeah, the suspense must be terrible."
"I'd probably be the guy just standing up when they come over," she remarked. "I'm like: 'Hey, guys! What's going on? That a gun you got there?' and then the Union pop up and shoot me."
"Ugh. I would prefer to be up here on this end. At least you can see more of the advance from up here."
"You would want to see?"
"Well, yeah. More time to prepare."
"More time to psych myself out."
Ashley had a point, I suppose. There's a value to not seeing. You don't want to see an old man at the beach in a speedo, because there are things better unseen. You don't want to have the image in your mind to dwell on, not now, not ever. But that's not always the case.
Sometimes you just want to see.
Ashley Dunbar McMullen took me to Antietam. Technically, she swooped me up to Gettysburg first, which I had planned on passing through the day before. Do you know about Google maps? I use it exclusively. When it loses GPS, it re-routes you upon regaining signal. So if you choose a different variant of the route, it will place you on its preferred route without telling you. So my plans were thwarted by a hilly countryside and a general incompetence. She got me to Gettysburg to get my NPS passport stamp.
We drove to Antietam, gabbing all the way, being judgy judgers and gossiping about people we hadn't seen in years. You know the type of conversation, even if you weren't there. It was old friends getting mad at things that happened eons ago, talking smack about teachers and weirdos from the halcyon time before moving apart. I loved it. And it consumes the drive right up until we pulled into the Antietam National Historic Battlefield parking lot. I was not prepared.
"Hold on, let me just like . . . I don't know. I'm not in the proper frame to be discussing this place."
Ashley gave me a funny look and just let me have a minute. I don't know. It wasn't right, going in high on silliness.
We walked through the doors, I got my stamps, and we waited for the ranger talk upstairs. There's a nearly 200° view of the battlefield's major landmarks from upstairs. Of course, the area would have been significantly denuded (Thanks Helga) during the battle, and this place would have been an incredible vantage. As it was, we could see the steeple near where McClellan sat and watched his men get cut to pieces. We could see the end of bloody lane, where five hundred Confederates held against two thousand advancing Yanks for hours. We could see the trees that marked the edge of a cornfield where 2,500 men bled to death over the course of one September day a hundred fifty years ago.
The battle itself is fairly simple: Lee, just as always, positioned his troops better than his opposition. Stonewall Jackson, just as always, impressed his enemies and generally made everything much easier for Lee by just getting things done. Burnsides, just as you'd expect, spent the day combing out his beard and not getting his troops slaughtered on a terrible order. And McClellan, though you may not expect it, failed to take advantage of his opponent's inferior numbers, and didn't push his advantages when he finally had them. Maybe you did expect that, in which case, your pattern recognition is at least strong enough to make you the next general of the Army of the Potomac.
Regardless, the battle was fought to a draw, and exacted terrible losses on both sides.
When Ashley and I went through Bloody Lane, the sunken farm road in which do many lost their lives, Ashley exclaimed, "My gosh! Imagine sitting here and over that hill right there, there's all of a sudden Union troops pouring over the crest at you! I hadn't thought of that until the ranger said it: that's what makes this battle so awful. You feel like it's open and you can see everything, and all of a sudden there's men attacking you out of nowhere."
"Yeah, the suspense must be terrible."
"I'd probably be the guy just standing up when they come over," she remarked. "I'm like: 'Hey, guys! What's going on? That a gun you got there?' and then the Union pop up and shoot me."
"Ugh. I would prefer to be up here on this end. At least you can see more of the advance from up here."
"You would want to see?"
"Well, yeah. More time to prepare."
"More time to psych myself out."
Ashley had a point, I suppose. There's a value to not seeing. You don't want to see an old man at the beach in a speedo, because there are things better unseen. You don't want to have the image in your mind to dwell on, not now, not ever. But that's not always the case.
Sometimes you just want to see.
Today, I rolled past the trappiest of tourist traps. It's time like these when the etymology of that phrase takes physical form and shoves my course off the road. I pulled to a stop near the twenty-foot tall dinosaur mouth that frames a doorway. The sign promised a prehistoric forest learning experience. Educational! There were about forty dinosaurs and a statue of King Kong behind a head-high chain-link fence. I went inside to find a hundred thousand baubles and statuettes, many kitschy and cheap, but relatively many without any connection to the dinosaurs tauted on the signs.
A mother called her son.
"Paulie, come here. Be careful with your grabber! Which of these do you think—be careful! You'll knock all the glass over! Which of these do you think would go best on the fridge?"
The small boy rambled through the aisles with a plastic armature, making his treacherous way to his mother. In the back, a Hispanic mother and father struggled to satisfy their child with the cheaper coloring book. Over their heads, an edited sign proclaimed the prices. Five dollars for children. Six for adults. I walked to the dinosaur's mouth door. Six dollars? Madness. Antietam can be had for free. So can Harper's Ferry, if you're clever or a dunce and you walk instead of driving. I leaned up against the fence, my hands feeling the roughness of the rust under the flaking paint. I saw an older woman walking out of the park with what must be grandkids orbiting her. I wanted to shout to her: "What's the return on your investment? Is six dollars a fair price?" But I didn't. I looked at the King Kong up the hill and sighed, deeply.
No! I shook my head as if to clear it and steeled myself, walking back to the bike to grab the six dollars I would need to see the wonders of the park's flaking skulpturery. Some things are better seen and experienced. Some things deserve to be bought. But my steps slowed, stopped, and picked up again, less deliberate this time. I'd want that six dollars back, almost certainly. I'd want to go inside Luray, and maybe I'd want to see a movie with Curtis or Stephen, and six dollars was a lot when I would only have the story, afterwards. I then realized something utterly suffering.
If Delight had been there, twelve dollars world have been a steal.
The are times in life when I get more value than what I put in. There are people who make an experience more worthy. Maybe with a few people I know, you'd have to pay me more to see aging dinosaur statuary. Maybe with some people, the six dollars would be a fair asking price for an experience that brought us both together. And with some people, precious few of them, no experience is poorer, no place too dull, no time taxing, whatever the anatomical faults of the lizards you're examining. Delight was that for me.
Earlier today, on the C&O mule path, I was trying to remember what I must have loved about Delight, but in the way of things, all I could remember was the way she hurt me at the end, the complaints she had about my conduct, the fear she had of the future. Humans are not designed to take the memories of goodness. We assume those as the baseline, and we keen over things that throw us down, we write paeans to our losses, memorialize the hurt, and build temples to a hurt we've suffered. But the over value we place on hurt means I couldn't remember what I loved about a woman I love. Until a park of cracked and fading dinosaurs caused me to remember. And part of me wishes I hadn't. And most of me is glad I did. And all of me knows there are things not worth seeing.
Earlier today, on the C&O mule path, I was trying to remember what I must have loved about Delight, but in the way of things, all I could remember was the way she hurt me at the end, the complaints she had about my conduct, the fear she had of the future. Humans are not designed to take the memories of goodness. We assume those as the baseline, and we keen over things that throw us down, we write paeans to our losses, memorialize the hurt, and build temples to a hurt we've suffered. But the over value we place on hurt means I couldn't remember what I loved about a woman I love. Until a park of cracked and fading dinosaurs caused me to remember. And part of me wishes I hadn't. And most of me is glad I did. And all of me knows there are things not worth seeing.
"[T]he over value we place on hurt . . . " Do you really think that applies to all humans in general? I mean, I'm an introverted melancholy, so I have staked a claim on pain and this statement resonates deeply with me, but there are some people who are seemingly not affected by hurts done to them or the pain of a breakup and can move on right away. Or do you think that's just a façade?
ReplyDeleteWell, I would argue that most people who walk away from breakups unaffected are those people who are doing the breaking, so it's no surprise to them and they have had time to prepare, leaning, as it were, upon the old relationship as a crutch while they come to terms with its end. And some people are monsters.
DeleteThere's a psychological aversion to loss, testable if your experiment is well-designed, that shows repeatedly that humans prefer a sure loss of a small amount rather than a small chance of a massive loss. I've felt it, too.
There's also a tendency to think of the past badly: a short period of pain is remembered more clearly than a long period, and the same with happiness. But so often happiness comes to us in long periods and sadness in bursts that we tend to remember the pain more readily than the joy. That's why polls have to form their questions so carefully when they ask about general well-being. Things tend to skew downward.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about when I wrote it. I had just finished Thinking Fast, and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
Well, I would argue that most people who walk away from breakups unaffected are those people who are doing the breaking, so it's no surprise to them and they have had time to prepare, leaning, as it were, upon the old relationship as a crutch while they come to terms with its end. And some people are monsters.
DeleteThere's a psychological aversion to loss, testable if your experiment is well-designed, that shows repeatedly that humans prefer a sure loss of a small amount rather than a small chance of a massive loss. I've felt it, too.
There's also a tendency to think of the past badly: a short period of pain is remembered more clearly than a long period, and the same with happiness. But so often happiness comes to us in long periods and sadness in bursts that we tend to remember the pain more readily than the joy. That's why polls have to form their questions so carefully when they ask about general well-being. Things tend to skew downward.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about when I wrote it. I had just finished Thinking Fast, and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.