Ancient Roads

We've all been fussing around here about the situation in Kosovo. This being spring and Easter and Passover and all, the tragedy seems magnified, as if it weren't large enough already. I was browsing on my hard disk yesterday and stumbled over this piece, which I wrote a few years ago after spending a day driving through the countryside surrounding Washington, DC.   david 4/11/99

"We can move the earth and leave the world unchanged. We can change our hearts and influence everything."

Today we traveled ancient roads. We made our way out of Washington, DC down the same paths followed by the founders of our country: George Washington, Daniel Boone, Merriweather Lewis, and Thomas Jefferson. We surveyed fields spoiled by Civil War and visited the final home of the many unknown. How, in a single day, can so many pass into eternal anonymity? How can one walk into the face of such fire? And why?

The history of this land is only punctuated with these violent and irrational acts. For every act of unthinking violence there have been a thousand of kindness, a million of thoughtfulness, and a billion of love. We care about each other more than our histories recall. We are gentler with each other. We are more human. These generals and their nasty henchmen do not define our collective bravery. They are cowards in that they choose such expedient means to reach such noble ends, compromising themselves and their ideals in the process. If they were truly courageous, they would engage as humans and invent mutual satisfaction. If they were wise they would revere life rather than abuse it. If they were strong they would bend without breaking themselves or their counterparts. If they were powerful they would not make such terrible noise.

The countryside has survived this parade of insults. The deer still graze, gazing at us dumbly and unmoved. The centuries-old homesteads still produce corn and tomatoes and 'lopes. Front porches are still comfortable places to sit 'of a summer evening,' talking quietly, commenting on each passing phenomenon. The highways are smoother now, although they were clearly designed more to be negotiated at the speed of a walking horse than at the unconscious speed of the two hundred horses under the hood of our rented Grand Am. We are by my counting now ten generations from the founding of this nation and nearly twenty since the European "discovery" and settlement started, and while we've changed the makeup on the face of this rocky land, we have yet to have appreciable impact on the land itself.

I love to visit this territory because it reminds me not of the futility of our struggles but of the harmony of them. We can move the earth and leave the world unchanged. We can change our hearts and influence everything. We can step tenuously into some morning's cornfield and find our eternal anonymity as easily as this wonderful day will slip into an irretrievable past. And while some will morn and some will forget, the countryside will swallow this experience too, at the same easy pace it reserves especially for its most favorite children.

PS: I happened upon Slobodan Milosovic's email address the other evening, but the Serbian Ministry of Information's web site has since deleted it. I sent him some choice vituperation. Perhaps you'd like to send some, too. Here's the Serbian Ministry of Information's email address: mirs@srbija-info.yu and their site address (if you want to see some really amateurish propoganda).
http://www.serbia-info.com.

Pray for peace and understanding. das

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