Easter Parade

We drove to Kennesaw Mountain early Sunday afternoon to enjoy the first full day of sunshine we've had in days. The weather was clear and cool, in the upper 60s or low 70s. Kennesaw Mountain is the location of a Civil War Battlefield, one of the battles to prevent Sherman from marching on Atlanta--which ultimately failed. The Confederates won the battle but lost the war. The older I get, the less I have any inclination to romanticize war; in fact, that inclination is about out of my system altogether now. Over 5,000 young men, Union and Confederate, lost their lives at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. An open grassy field near the Visitor's Center commemorates the bones of the slain that lie there underneath the soil. Signs warn visitors to neither picnic nor fly kites on the area.

Inside the Visitor's Center is a small museum with a few items of the times, dioramas of cut-outs of men associated with the Civil War and the battles in the Atlanta area, and lots of words describing the Civil War and the battles. Again, I'm a daughter of the South, but I don't have any romantic notions about the Civil War or about the plantation culture that enslaved millions of blacks. And anyone who does should ingest this bit of information I gleaned from our quick turn in the Kennesaw Mountain Museum: local slave owners "loaned" their slaves to the Confederate Army to dig battle entrenchments and to do other labor associated with the war. The slave owners received $25 a month per slave; soldiers made $18 a month. War is ever the same, isn't it? The rich get richer (for the slaves didn't get that money; their white masters profited) while young men die.

Smelling the stench of blood even through this distance of time, we quickly exited the museum to walk up Kennesaw Mountain. The day was glorious, but, unfortunately, I still had a lingering head cold from my bout with flu, and I'm sure allergies added to my misery, too. The walk up the sometimes steep trail was a little wearing on someone who hadn't gotten any exercise recently. But we made it to the top, past the display cannons set behind the remains of the battle mounds dug by Confederate soldiers. Kennesaw Mountain was a popular destination on that Easter Sunday. I don't think I've ever seen so many people and their dogs on a woody walking trail. When we left the park a little after 3 p.m., vehicles were bumper to bumper at the entrance.

This is not a trail for people who crave silence. During the Civil War, Kennesaw Mountain was surrounded by plowed fields and farms; today it's surrounded by business districts with metal warehouses and heavily populated suburban areas. We listened for birdsong above the constant chatter of visitors and heard Eastern Phoebes, Cardinals, Pileated Woodpeckers, and Rufous-Sided Towhees. But mostly we heard people. It was an Easter Parade of urban and suburban dwellers longing for the outdoors and making their way to the nearest woods to celebrate spring and a day of sunshine.