Appreciation

The Dunker Church, Antietam National Battlefield, Sharpsburg, MD
Click on image for a larger view.

On Saturday I put in seven hours of service at Antietam battlefield - also called Sharpsburg battlefield by the Confederates after the neighboring town. Seven hours sounds like a long time and it is if you’re at job you dislike, or waiting for a connecting flight, or going from boring class lecture to boring class lecture. But I am not bored at Antietam, not even when the visitor’s center has a lull in activity. I never have been bored there even when I wasn’t volunteering. There’s something truly rewarding about serving at Antietam with the NPS. Actually there are many things that are rewarding about it and the overwhelming part is the feeling of appreciation or more specifically the feeling of being appreciated. It not only comes from the rangers and the public, it also comes from the people of the past – the soldiers and the civilians – who were there in September and the following months of 1862. I can feel this deep down inside of me. The people of the past appreciate that I care enough to learn their stories of tragedy and triumph, service and sacrifice, and that I enthusiastically and passionately share them. They appreciate that I am helping to keep their memory alive and that I am helping to preserve the past for the present and the future. I can feel this appreciation when I talk to the visitors and the rangers, when I walk the fields, and when I look at the photos of the past. I have had a deep love for Antietam for many years and my love started with my first visit there in my teens. It has only grown. It’s difficult to express in words why because words don’t convey the feelings clearly enough. In a broad sense I can say it is because Antietam was a pivotal and defining moment in United State’s history, maybe ‘the’ pivotal moment. It is the turning point of the American Civil War and the crossroads of freedom. People fought, struggled, and sacrificed much – many sacrificing their lives – for what they believed in on those western Maryland fields. The civilians of Sharpsburg, Maryland - mostly pacifist German Baptist Brethern farmers – had no choice but to be unwilling non-combative participants as caregivers and gravediggers. They lost property, possessions, livestock and treasure, and they suffered, struggled and sacrificed for the greater good. Ultimately they made it through the ordeal. I appreciate what happened there and how it helped to define this nation, and I can feel that appreciation is mutual. Words pale and my love and appreciation for the soldiers, civilians and the now quiet fields come through best in my photos and in my service. To merely say that I am happy to be there is an understatement.