It’s Right Here

Do you ever have one of those moments in which you suddenly realize that something you knew about for a long time but thought was some distant thing or place is actually right there in front of you? A Homer Simpson “doh!” moment?

I had one last week.

I’ve lived within an hour-and-a-half of Washington DC for the past twenty years, and relish the fact that I am so close to the heart of much of our country’s history. Good history and regrettable history. History that formed our nation, history that tore us apart and history that put us back together again. Some of my favorite vacations are stay-at-home vacations, during which I take a couple of day-trips into DC to visit museums and historic sites and soak in the magnitude and importance of our Nation’s Capitol. All of that is less than ninety minutes away.

Well, during one such stay-at-home vacation last week, it hit me that the house I’ve lived in for six years is less than a thirty-minute drive from five notable Civil War battle sites: Harper’s Ferry, Gettysburg, Monocacy, South Mountain and Antietam. They are all right here in my back yard.

“Doh!”

Actually I can see South Mountain from my front yard and Antietam, location of the bloodiest single day battle in our history, is right on the other side of the mountain. I bought a new camera during my week off and wanted to test it out on some landscapes; Antietam turned out to be the perfect place.

One of the photos is at the beginning of this post; a few more are on my new photo blog.

I don’t live in the past, but I think studying the past is important to the understanding of our present and can help us navigate our future. We get so caught up in the details of our lives that we often overlook how the present fits into the broader context of past and future. And sometimes we are so busy that we don’t realize that past, present and future converge right here in front of us.