Vicksburg

I needed to get out of the house today.  I had wanted to go to Clarksdale, but it is simply too far away for a pleasant day trip.  I decided to go back to Vicksburg and go to the Military Park.

It has been two or three years since I was last there, and I always forget the size of the place.  Every time I think I am about to turn the last corner, a new segment of the park opens up instead.  It is huge.

It is also the oddest mixture of solemnity and celebration.  From the very first moment one passes through the entrance, memorials to the dead soldiers and leaders of the Union line the sides of the road.  Separate granite monuments honor the contributions of every state; one can find Ohio, Indiana, even tiny Rhode Island.  Blue and Red cast-iron markers show where the troops on both sides dug trenches, positioned cannon, mined to capture the enemy.  Preserved cannon perch on ridge tops.  Huge constructions of bronze and stone tower over the landscape in grandiose mourning and tribute.

At the same time, tourists are snapping selfies on the steps of the Illinois Monument.  Small children slide down the 47-step-a-step-for-every-day-of-the-siege staircase's banister and whistle and sing inside the Pantheon-imitating dome so they can hear the echoes bounce. Brave fit young things scurry down steep hills and fight their way back up again shouting insults and encouragement to one another. A motorcycle club picnics next to the remains of a restored ironclad ship.  A father and daughter look around and think they are unobserved, then suddenly race up the steps of Wisconsin's monument and do the Rocky bounce, arms held high and laughing, when they reach the top.  A little boy runs up to an array of cannon and immediately starts yelling, "Boom!"

I feel like I'm seeing double.  On the one hand, this is a place of sadness and mourning.  So many people died here.  So many lives changed or ended.  A city was brought to collapse and destruction after a blockade and siege of more than a month and a half.  Now, though, this is a tourist destination, a place where grandparents follow faster-moving grandchildren up grassy hills, a place where competition bicyclists push up the steep grades for training,  a place where families bring their dogs for exercise.

Could those serious men locked in battle so long ago have possibly ever dreamed of this place as it is now, green and verdant, spring blooming flowers and wisteria scenting the air?  Could they have imagined the steady stream of vehicles with tags from every state in the nation come to touch history for themselves?  What would they have thought?  Would a glimpse into a place that for them had to be full of grim determination, fear, and death instead 150 years in the future being a place of tranquility, recreation, and communion please them?

I was thinking all these things as I drove slowly through the park.  At the center of the spiral is the National Cemetery, rows and rows of graves for those who laid down their lives on one side or the other, small, tidy stones like grey teeth protruding from the early spring grass.  Families were hiking among them, pausing to look at something that caught their attention, perhaps a name, perhaps an identification of place of origin.  I hope that those people would all find something hopeful in what their resting place has become.  Something beautiful grew in that place of great loss and ugliness.