A taxing day at Antietam

I realized I didn’t explain the trip in my first post. It shows how frazzled I was last night. I am enroute to Minnesota from Delaware and taking 11 days and the southerly route. For those of you who have followed other trips you may have noticed I didn’t mention Buddha. She crossed the rainbow bridge in late January, and the cats are with me because I’ll be in Minnesota for a few months.

The cats are adjusting and the trailer with screened windows open all night is like 24/7 catio for them. I woke up in the middle of the night to the pungent smell of skunk and to find Lucy quite animated. At six am as the road noise on I70 began to intensify, the birds started their chorus drowning out all else.

I selected this first stop in Hagerstown, MD because I wanted to see the Antietam battlefield. I was never much interested in the Civil War because it was so bloody awful and because growing up in Delaware, the first state, our history was much more focused on colonial America and the Revolutionary War. A few years ago, I listened to a book called, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy about four women who took active roles during the war. That partially promoted me to do my civil rights/civil war road in 2022, and intensified my interest in the complexities of the civil war. And current events and sentiments in the US make me think there are some lessons from history to revisit.

The plan for today was to visit Antietam and get tax payments made that my CPA made me aware of Tuesday evening. :(. I got to yhe post office to get envelopes and stamps, but the library where I could print out payment vouchers didn’t open until 1:30. Fortunately both were close to the battlefield, so I zipped back to the battlefield, got my National parks passport stamped just in time to see the orientation film.

While the film at Gettysburg was bland, uninformative, and trying very hard to be politically correct, this film took footage from movies and re-enactments and just told the story of the battle. Antietam was the first battlefield that was photographed after the fact with dead bodies lying rotting on the killing fields. The horrors of war were exposed.

The idea of fighting in a war has always been terrifying to me. I can’t imagine people going to battle willingly. One such eager person was John Cook enlisting at the age of 14 as a bugler. He fought at Antietam when he was 15, taking over a cannon because all the cannoners had been killed. He received high honors and died in 1915 at the age of 67. Nothing much is known about his later life; I wonder if he suffered from PTSD.

Another character was Thomas Francis Meacher. Exiled from Ireland for his resistance fighting there, he was transported to Tasmania. He escaped from there and ended up in America forming a very successful Irish brigade fighting for the north. After the war, he lived in Montana where he drowned and his body was never found. What a life!

This battle was also an impetus for the amazing Clara Barton to start the American Red Cross and an organization to assist soldiers who lived through wars. She must have had nerves of steel to attend to doctors here as they amputated limbs, prioritze those who were savable, ect. All while the battle was going on

I saw the main battle points— the cornfield which changed hands often during hours of fighting, sunken road where soldiers were ambushed, and the bridge which out numbered Confederate troops held off Union soldiers intile they ran out of ammo and had to retreat. The bridge formerly named for the river is now Burnside bridge for the Union General who captured it. Interestingly, it carried car traffic until 1966 when a by-pass was built.

The park is a beautiful place and the views especially from the observation tower are amazing. It’s hard to image so much carnage here; and just when I was contemplating ghosts on the battlefield, a statue appeared on the hill in front of me and I had to do a double take that he wasn’t real.

By now, I’m dying of heat because it’s again 90F and the wind is alternating between providing some cooling relief and just blistering more heat. It’s almost 1:30, so time to head back to Sharpsburg to print at the library. I was spared the 15 cent fee because I was printing a tax document. Now the post office doesn’t open again until 2 pm, so I’m heading back to Williamsport to cool off at camp, and I stop at the post office there to get my envelope post marked. I’m not leaving anything to chance!

The ac had kicked on as it was supposed to to keep the cats cool, but the trailer was still warm. It was time for another one of those Broken Heels hazy IPAs and a nap. I rallied after my nap to have something to eat, do some journaling, and complete my daily language study in French and Greek. I’m trying to keep my brain from atrophy.

It finally cooled off enough that I took my kayak down to the Couchegue river for a little paddle. I scared up two or three pairs of wood ducks, a kingfisher, and an otter or a muskrat. Red wing blackbirds called from the trees. Except for the gnats, it was a nice paddle. A perfect way to end the day.