Cedar Creek, North Virginia

For two night I sleep in the woods at Cedar Creek Battlefield. There are not many trees here now. Luckily, there is not alot of me to hide. The rain came in just as the snow did at Valley Forge when I made storm camp there, yet it is different here. I keep expecting something from the past to reach out and touch me here, something that feels more buried at Valley Forge. No ghosts run across the fields where young men prepared to fight and die but not all the blood is dry. It is still in the air. It is still feeding the grass. No horses neighed at the night, that don't now live here. Still, there is a feeling resonating off these rolling hills that keeps the heart mindfully looking back.
I rise in a cloud today. When camp is lashed to my back, I walk into the same cloud. No antique soldiers march out of the line of trees with me, but I kept looking. I am walk in history books, while someone else turns the pages--or is it my feet?