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ANY BREAK IS A GOOD BREAK
There is something about that extra day tacked onto a weekend, be it a Monday or a Friday, which turns a getaway into a mini vacation. Of course three day weekends are a state of mind. One "three day weekend" trip my boyfriend John and I took to...
Catch the Bluebonnets in Texas This Spring
If you haven’t seen the wildflowers in Texas in the spring, you haven’t lived! The highway medians and hillsides are full of color – bright red, yellow and blue, pink and cream – but you better look out because cars are always pulling off the side...
How to Travel for Free by Leading or Promoting Tours
==================================== Whether you're 16 or 60, you CAN travel just about anywhere in the world for free -- and even with a nice stash of cash in your pocket -- by telling like-minded people about a trip and convincing them to go...
Indiana Jones and the Volcano
Experiencing a live volcano was on top of our agenda when my friend Rob and I visited the exotic land of Costa Rica. The plane touched down in the capital city of San Jose, and, after clearing customs, we headed for the car rental to pick up a...
The Advantages of Vacation Rentals in Costa Rica
The Advantages of Vacation Rentals in Costa Rica
Whether you’ve saved up for years for a fun family vacation or want a romantic honeymoon in a tropical paradise, Costa Rica offers something for everyone. This lovely locale isn’t one of the...
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Glimpses of History
Traveling to the Washington D.C. area and the northwestern part
of Virginia becomes a trip into history. The eye and mind not
only view the scenery, but also ghosts of the country's past.
Whorls of fog, like mists of memory, wind over paths swathed
through forests of ever vigilant green. Trees choke off the view
of the horizon as sleek horses graze on ground christened by a
nation's two fights: one a battle for independence, one a battle
within. Everywhere the eye wanders, glimpses of history,
memories of the past mingle with scenes of the present.
Battle fields forever scarred with the scattered litter of the
dead are surrounded with masses of hardwoods fertilized with the
blood of men who wore the Union blue or the Confederate gray.
Cannons, forever guarding ghosts of those who fought and died,
left wheel ruts unfilled by the passing of time. In hollow
mockery of troops long gone, towering trees stand attention
around a painting of a grand house which burned leaving but
scraps of a foundation and graves and monuments, lasting
reminders of the price of a war which turned brother against
brother and friend into enemy.
In Fredricksberg, colonial buildings march side by side in their
restored grandeur, quaint, narrow, and deep with pocks caused by
shelling in revolutionary or civil war time. Stark, plain yet
with silent dignity, a battle-scarred church, built of brick and
mortar, stands separated from rushing traffic by a line of
swaying trees. Aged pine floors creak echoes of the past in the
building where heroic medicine had been found, while young
girls, older ones too, shudder at the tales of treatment of long
ago. A tavern and inn sits in memory where the rich entered by
the front door, and the common folk by the back. A deck of cards
lies on a table, the ace of spades missing to avoid more of the
King's tax, the start of "not playing with a full deck." White
and proud stands the home of the first president's mother, a
mother's home where a son came to ask her blessing and where a
boy ghost lurks.
Monticello brings many to visit its splendor and its view.
Gentle mountains softened by graduated shades of green touch the
low, lazy haze curling about the rounded peaks. Deep valleys
spread below, filled with close ranks of pines, oaks, and elms
divided by lush meadows or fields of fragrant grasses and hay.
On a hill-top sits the ancient, in New World time, house with
multiple chimneys pointing to the bright blue sky where wisps of
friendly clouds play hide-and-seek. Around the mansion lie
carpets of velvet grass shaded by weeping
willows and towering
oaks while flowers peek through hedges. Vistas of wooded hills
and valleys hide old houses in armies of trees with roofs and
chimneys briefly spotted behind the sentries. Trails of history
meander through today's sunlight, bringing back memories of
yesterdays gone by. A stone monument marks the grave now empty
while immortality lives in brick and wood for all to see, but
not touch.
A flood of traffic rushes into the nation's capital, greeted by
a towering white spear and a columned reminder of those who led
through the two historic wars most grim. The spires of a
red-brick American castle reach toward the drizzling sky on one
side of a mall of grass and paths. Mobs of citizens from here
and there play tourist, staring in awe or simply gawking at the
mixture of history now surrounded by crass commercialism. The
long reach of grass is framed by a domed capitol blurred by
mist, buildings old and new housing memories and dreams, the
towering column reaching upward unsoftened by any influence.
Around and through rages a river of people flowing, ebbing,
creating rapids that cannot be navigated. Apparently healthy men
accost walkers, begging for money for food; all look amazingly
well-fed. Here lies history drowning in today as a nation's
mansion hides behind bars and barricades, unapproachable.
Standing tall and proud at the top of a hill like an elderly
lady fallen on hard times, Chatham, a mansion from colonial
times used in the Civil War as a Union headquarters to subdue
Fredricksberg, brings feelings of dread and of anticipation. The
mansion gathers her tattered gown around her with dignity,
staring haughtily across the river, overlooking the shadows of
destruction left in her lap. One is overwhelmed with the need to
escape from the oppressive darkness by fleeing around the circle
of her skirt. Like hiding behind his mother in safety, he finds
her garden holds peace and contentment, full of flowering,
blooming life.
Memories of the past, real and imagined, spin and mix with views
of the present creating a new, more intimate portrait of a slice
of history.
About the author:
Vivian Gilbert Zabel taught English, composition, and creative
writing for twenty-five years, honing her skills as she studied
and taught. She is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/, a site
for Writers, and her
portfolio is http://www.Writing.Com/authors/vzabel. Her books,
Hidden Lies and Other Storied and Walking the
Earth, can be found through Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com.
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