South Mountain State Battlefield

Author's Comments

Most people drive through Boonsboro without stopping. I understand. The battlefield here is not Gettysburg. There are no famous photographs, no famous names attached to this ridge, and the interpretive markers are modest enough that you can pass them without feeling you have missed anything. That is exactly why I keep coming back. South Mountain is the Blue Ridge at its most unassuming. The Appalachian Trail follows the crest and in late October, when the hardwoods have turned and the air has gone genuinely cold, the ridge offers something Gettysburg cannot: solitude with a view. The stone monument is rough and low and nothing like the marble Washington on the Mall, which is part of its appeal. Local men built it in 1827 with their hands and the mountain's own rock, and it has the character of something made by people who lived close to the land they were marking. I have come here for sunrise in the first weeks of November. The valley to the west fills with fog before the light arrives, and when it does arrive it comes over the eastern ridge in long, nearly horizontal bands. The monument catches that light on its rough face and goes amber for maybe twenty minutes. The panorama is wide enough that you need to decide what the photograph is before you make it, because the view asks more of you than a narrow frame does. Pick a direction. Wait. The horizon here is honest and far, and the world below it looks, on the right morning, like it belongs to no particular century at all.

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