Today I went a little rogue and drove myself up over the mountain to Gettysburg, PA. I do this from time to time; vaguely mention I’m leaving, wander for a couple hours in an off-puttingly conscious fugue state. And today, with no money and shoes only on second thought, I chose to drove East. I live about forty minutes west of the Gettysburg Battlefield, a location more well-known and popularly visited than anything in my little town could ever hope to be. I have been there many times. It’s a tourist location, a historical site, somewhere every relative who dares to visit us wants to see. And we take them, hearing the same old story of nineteenth century warfare, climbing the same old towers, and tripping over the same old cannons. It’s an experience which lacks originality; it has never been thought provoking. But today, driving slowly with windows down and music silenced, then sitting barefoot under a cannon, I allowed it to be. I am someone who immensely values agency and peace, which is why I have never and will never condone or support the institution of the military. Yet I am also someone who refuses to renounce those who passionately fight for what they believe in, even if our beliefs will never be the same. Thus I take pride in being able to stand in the Gettysburg Battlefield, on soil fed by the blood of those those who fought so valiantly for what they decided to be true—be that morals, agency, or the value of a legacy—next to cannons that inevitably stand for what I so vehemently oppose. As I sit in this place, a place of bloodshed and heartbreak, I am inarguably aware of the peacefulness that it has come to hold. Despite the war that it indubitably remembers, this land has turned to a refuge, a place for quiet contemplation and happily tweeting birds. Because for me, the Gettysburg Battlefield is my belonging: long grass, small flowers, the sunshine, and a road that winds through places tasting equally familiar and unknown. I may have merely shallow roots—only eleven years, not two hundred—in South Central PA, but they are roots. And as I come to understand what it means to be firmly rooted, and what it means to accomplish a home (for homes are not built, they are achieved), I come closer to understanding where I can find peace, happiness, and love: in the regrowth from tragic results of bad experiences. While I still struggle to pinpoint just what is home to me, I have been learning more and more about where I belong. I may never fully understand heritage and locational loyalty, but I understand that the days and weeks and months I have spent in my life can be averaged out into solid and valuable experiences which shape who I am and who I can become. I may never have a distinct location that I feel I belong to, but the fields and trees and important sites of the Gettysburg National Military Park are my physical conglomerate, an excellently symbolic representation of the places I know best: winding roads and classic Pennsylvania woods.
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I'm Audrey, a college student and existential rambler.
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February 2021
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