anachronism
It is about a half-an-hour before dawn in the summer of 2008. I have just switched off the headlights of my car, slipped the door key off the ring and into the pocket of my shorts, and stepped outside.
The air is heavy, thick, and humid. It hangs like a heavy curtain over south-central Pennsylvania, a somewhat stifling blanket given the temperature. I am about to leave my car behind as I slip soundlessly into a unique place that is an anachronism world — a rare place that permits you in the stillness of the early morning to glide effortlessly back 145 years into a land that hasn’t changed much since it was touched by the hard hand of war in the high summer of 1863.
My legs feel loose and my lungs strong as I begin jogging. Within moments, I pass on my right the monument to General John Sedgwick — the much beloved bachelor general killed almost a year after fighting left Gettysburg by a sharpshooter whose aim he derided with the last words to leave his lips, “Boys, they couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” In the dark, I can barely make out the faint dark outline of the large equestrian monument to Sedgwick on his faithful charger Cornwall, sitting calmly peering west.
The humid air will be oppressive later, but right now in the blessed shadows of the rapidly fading twilight, it is actually beneficial to my scarred lungs. I find myself unconsciously and effortlessly picking up the pace. I run towards the massive white Pennsylvania monument looming near. When I reach it, I turn around and start back down the road. Near where I turn to head west, the faint outline of Father William Corby is visible. On this spot, the priest issued an Absolution upon the Irish Brigade that was waiting to go into the chaos of battle that had erupted on the second day of fighting.
I run along a ways, passing the battle scarred Trostle farm, turning down another road, and then finally heading into an area that was known during the battle simply as “the Valley of Death.” It is quiet now — I have not seen or even heard a single soul, the friendly snort of the bay horse who lives in a big muddy field at the Klingel farm excepting. But if I had been running in this place on the late afternoon of July 2, I would have been running through a hailstorm of lead and shell. My ears would have been flooded with the cacophony of battle — the deep bass thump of cannons, the ping of bullets striking the boulders, the moans and groans of death, the cheers and screams. As it is now, it is hushed and calm, and I feel as though I am the only person left on earth.
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to travel back in time, and I now wonder — have I perhaps crossed over some unseen barrier between worlds this morning? Have I somehow broken the continuum of time and stepped back to another era and place? And if so, is a transient phenomenon or am I never going back to my present world?
If I have, I don’t know what else I can do but keep running. Hasn’t that always been the solution in my life when I do not know what else to do with myself? I mean, I get diagnosed with cancer and my world crumbles to dust before my eyes, and what do I do? I do the only thing that seems to make sense and is logical: I run.
I am now thoroughly warmed to the task at hand, and my strides are strong and even, my breaths regular and steady. I enter the area known as the Devil’s Den. It is an eerie place with colossal granite boulders the size of houses. I always thought the jumble of rocks here looked like a giant’s playground, or perhaps what might have happened if someone bumped the Hand of the One Mightier than the Armies’ elbow when He was setting stones upon the earth.
This was also a place of extreme suffering that warranted its demonic name many times over. The area to my left was known as the Slaughter Pen and the modest rock choked trickle here once ran red with blood from wounded men who dragged themselves to its edges in an attempt to slake their feverish thirst.
The rocks rise around me on both sides, foreboding and bleak. There even seems to be a bit of extra chill in the air. I pick up the pace even though I am running up a rise. At the top of the rise, in a hair pin turn in the road, stands a large witness tree that has kept vigil over the battlefield since 1863.
Happy to be out from between the looming boulders, I slow down a bit after the climb and settle back into stride. On my left is the strange and mysterious triangular field where boys Texas and Georgia locked into mortal combat with boys from Pennsylvania and Orange County, New York. The commander of the Orange County contingent was named Augustus van Horne Ellis. He now stands in granite on my right with his arms folded, gazing forever across told the enemy, near the spot where his life came to an abrupt halt when an ounce of Southern lead struck him square in the forehead.
I keep on, past the monument to the 86th New York with the bronze plaque of a mother mourning her son: I Yield Him Onto His Country and His God.
I then make another turn onto a road that loops around the Wheatfield. Like most of the roads at Gettysburg it is undulating with sudden drops and rises. For a few minutes I run alone through woods that are just beginning to lighten with the first gray light of dawn. Then I turn again and up a short crest. At the top, monuments loom like bronze soldierly apparitions, casting peculiar elongated shadows in the pale light.
I find myself really speculating — have I slipped the surly bonds of earth to enter some other realm? Or is that just my somewhat oxygen hungry mind playing tricks?
Nothing to do but keep running, right? A line from Hamlet flashes across the synapses: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.”
It is then down into the Wheatfield — scene of immeasurable suffering and death. It isn’t a very large area when you consider the ghastly number of men who fell here. I continue on up the area called the Loop, monuments on both sides of the road serving as a testament to how many troops were sucked into the vortex, the maelstrom of death that swirled here late on the afternoon of July 2, 1863.
I have always been fascinated with this part of the battlefield, and I suppose that is in large part due to the presence of the battlefield itself and the fact that you can slip back in time like this, to a place where history hangs so densely that you almost have to brush it away to allow yourself to pass through it.
I briefly head east and it is then I first see the sun that is just now rising above the battlefield. It is huge and red, and somewhat hazy from the early morning fog. I’m struck by the size and reminded of the famous line from Crane — “The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.” I imagine the sun looked a lot like this during the battle, except then the reddish haze would have been from the thick acrid sulfer smoke of battle and not the dense wisps of mist.
I keep running, entering another park service lane off from the main artery known as the Wheatfield Road. This road loops through Rose’s Woods and past the spot where New Hampshire’s Colonel Cross was mortally wounded. Cross was as brave a man as they come — a tall, red-bearded man with a sharp temper and a penchant for being wounded; prior to Gettysburg he had been shot twelve times. He came to Gettysburg a haunted man — he had a premonition that this would be his last battle.
His aide recalled that the Colonel usually wore a bright red handkerchief over his prematurely balding head; on this day he drew out from an inside pocket a large new black silk handkerchief instead and the aide, knowing of the premonitions, was appalled. Perhaps noting the black handkerchief, General Hancock, commanding the corps, called out to Cross, “Colonel Cross this day will bring you a star.” By that, Hancock referred to a long-deserved promotion to general would be coming for Cross. However, Cross shook his head gravely and responded resignedly, “No General, this is my last battle.”
Cross was shot through the stomach and died of his painful wound before midnight. I run right past the large boulder from which the Confederate soldier who shot him had hidden. “I wished that I would live to see the rebellion suppressed and peace restored” he said as his flame flickered out. “I think the boys will miss me. Say good-bye to all.”
How did he know, I wonder? What is out there beyond this world? Anything? Nothing? Are we sometimes offered glimpses of the future? By the same token are we allowed glimpses of what we’ve left behind in the past?
I run back up the rise of the Loop and the monuments look more like bronze and granite than specters and phantoms now that the sun has climbed somewhat and burned off a bit of the fog that still clings tenaciously about the ground.
Gettysburg is a beautiful place to run, but to really appreciate a run here, I think you have to have a good understanding and comprehend what happened here. It is such a pastoral and peaceful place, and yet at the same time this piece of Pennsylvania land was once a killing field. It is sometimes difficult to wrap my mind around that, even knowing very well the history of what happened here.
As I begin back up the crest that leads towards my car and Little Round Top, I’m a bit relieved to see my familiar vehicle sitting there waiting patiently for me in the distance. But I also feel a touch of regret that it was just my imagination that I had stole off into another space.
I’ve returned to my car now. Other than the monuments and the park service roads, the land where I have run has essentially remained untouched since 1863. When I touch the smooth metal of the car, I pass back through a portal of time and once more into the modern realm. Crusted with a bit of salt, I fumble with my key and eagerly grab my frozen water bottle. The ice in the bottle has now mostly melted as the day has begun to warm, and tiny water droplets cling to the side. I drink from it insatiably, ravenous for the cold water.
Pretty soon there will be busloads of people here, but for now it is still quiet. I walk around with my bottle a bit and stretch. I need to cool off a bit, so I head up the back of Little Round Top. The first tourists are just reaching the battlefield as I start back down from the crest. The transitory opportunity to step back in time is now spent, and it is time for me to take my leave of the battlefield. I will without doubt be back again, to tiptoe back in time for an hour while wearing shorts and running shoes, even if merely in my mind’s eye.
