A Hiking We Will Go

This morning, youngest's Trail Life troop (think what the Boy Scouts used to be, before they decided it was okay to pander) had two "hikes" at the Manassas Battlefield. Since they combined short hikes and Ranger education, the event counts towards two of his badges (outdoors and heritage) and so it seemed like it would behoove us to go. Plus it was looking to be a lovely day. And the kiddos both enjoy the time spent with their friends at Trail Life.

So it was that the Sleepy family was piled into the minivan and toodling off to the Battlefield before we are usually all up from our slumber on Saturday. (Eldest has taken to sleeping in -- ahh, tweendom -- so the fact that he was up and raring to go was rather amazing.)

We started with the Matthews Hill loop. The park ranger (an actual ranger) did a lovely job telling the story of how it factored into the first battle of Manassas and various troop deployments, the purpose of what they were doing, and spotlighting some of the individuals who fought. It was all very interesting and I appreciated not hearing the current spiel about how the Civil War was only about slavery and anyone who says otherwise is a racist. (In fact, this particular spiel didn't touch on the whys of the war at all, just the whys of troop placement and whether or not they moved in to fight.)

Then we piled back in the car to hit up the spiel that's done near the Visitor's Center. I remarked to hubby how refreshing it was to hear just details without getting into the politics of it all. Not that we don't discuss the politics of it -- in fact, eldest chimed in with some interesting tidbits (we hit the Civil War in history this year and he was fascinated. In fact, the librarian at our local library was rather amazed as he requested just about every book for his age group on the Civil War and read through them. Which means, mental note, I should see about him reading Across Five Aprils. I didn't read it until high school, so I'm not sure about handing it to an 11 year old -- but maybe I should give it a peek and see if it's appropriate.)

Amusingly, one of the other parents (friends with us and dad to one of eldest's best friends) commented somewhat on the lack of demonizing of the Confederacy as we circled round to start the second talk.

Well, we all spoke too soon. This one, led by a volunteer not a park ranger, started out with "Who knows what the Civil War was about? That's right, slavery." And it digressed from there (apparently Lincoln was only elected because he was going to stop the spread of slavery - that was his sole qualification and why the South rebelled.) He did a lot more talking about individual people, which is interesting and not a bad idea when looking to catch the interest of the folks following you about in the great outdoors, but his focus seemed to hone in all the innocent civilians whose lives were disrupted if not downright ruined by those slavery loving Southerners.

I'll admit to not being overly annoyed when all the kids with us started losing interest and searching the clover on the ground for 4-leave varietals.

Still, it was a fun outing, the boys learned a little and we've had some good conversations about how things like the Civil War are nuanced and while yes, slavery was at issue, it was not the only issue and was, in fact, part of the larger issue of state's rights during the era of western expansion. We got into the economics somewhat, as well. So like I said, educational all around, and the kids had fun with their friends.

Afterward, since we were near, we hit up Pizzeria Uno for lunch and gorged upon deep dish. As you do.