I”ll remember this summer as the one I visited Gettysburg.
This was on our second foray into the US for the summer, and we’d made it as far as Alexandria, Virginia, with the aim to see Washington, DC. Driving the highway south, I made sure to voice my interest when we passed signposts heralding Antietam, Manassas, the Mason-Dixon Line…
Seeing the landscape upon which armies converged and battles were fought fascinated me. It took on its deepest meaning, however, when we walked the mall in DC, up to the Lincoln Memorial, and I was able to point to the Gettysburg Address. “Read it kids, and tomorrow we’ll see where it was given.”
And so we did. We pulled out of Virginia early, crossed back through Maryland and into Pennsylvania–not the first to do the route–and got to Gettysburg around lunchtime. The museum illustrated well how many people took part in the battle and from how far apart. The displays of battlefield medicine made an impression, too.
If you get the chance, however, drive the battlefield. We purchased the artfully crafted audio guide narrated by Stephen Lang, (of fame for not just the movies ‘Gettysburg’ and ‘Gods and Generals’ but the too-short-lived Fox series ‘Terra Nova’ which was a personal favourite.) Word to travellers from the Great White North: the GPS-enabled app won’t download to a Canadian cell phone. Thankfully, it comes with CDs and you can juggle the tracks as you try to drive along and follow the road signs stretching over miles of historic terrain.
The three-battle is a lot easier to conceive of when you see the landscape. We drove along Seminary Ridge and the southern Confederate lines, saw where Pickett’s charge stepped off, and then around to the Wheatfields, the Peach Orchards and Culp’s Hill, to Cemetery Ridge and the northern Union lines, where Pickett’s charge was ended. In summer, you can experience heat and environment the way things would have been for them. Driving through, my eyes traced the elevations they had to scale and pass over, and all the twisting undergrowth in the forests of white oak in Maryland, and red maple in Pennsylvania.
I had a few remaining days of vacation when I returned. The time away did wonders to boost my productivity and creativity. I wrote a full chapter of Kings of Krawmen in the span of a couple of days. I also revamped the ending to broaden my own fictional conflict–to provide a greater sense of import to the events culminating in my new story. Mostly, I need to preserve the richness of my characters and reinforce their need to find purpose, in all its variants, when they come into conflict.
I also need a little relentlessness of my own, for I’ve challenged myself to get the first draft of Kings of Kramwen done by the end of this year. That target’s getting harder to meet, but I’m only three chapters away from the first sword blows and axe chops of those conflicts that will characterize my tale from now until the end. It’s time to make them count.
