I was at Antietam at High Noon in the spring, and the Cornfield was just sprouting well, so I probably missed something.
Out in Montana, however, it was just stretching into dusk, and the sage was actually turning purple. To see the ragged track of headstones trailing off down toward the river...
Then, to see photos of those Code Pinkos, I'm troubled by VERY un-Christian, unpeaceful urges.
I've never been to Custer Hill though.
Speaking of Montana, the Bears Paw battlefield south of Chinook is worth visiting, although out of the way. It’s where Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians made their last stand before surrendering in 1877. Chief Joseph’s statement of why he had decided to surrender is very moving and often quoted. It’s a desolate and evocative place.
Oh, yeah. I was there for the first time last autumn after reading about it all my life. That place is genuinely weird and I'm not especially sensitive to that sort of thing. A lot of the locals will tell you the same.
Different feeling at Gettysburg altogether, a sort of sadness and grandeur where Pickett's men fell. At Sharpsburg, though, Burnside's Bridge - that's what the signs call it these days - did carry that sort of eerie feeling, but more to the point it's still obvious that it funneled infantry into a narrow kill zone dominated by high ground on the other side. Like the Custer hill it's hard to describe but easy to imagine when you're actually onsite. The Rebs must have thought it fish in a barrel. I did think that fording the river looked a little more difficult to my amateur eye than the books have related but it's been a century and a half. It sure would have beat trying to cross that bridge under fire.
Comparing the Sunken Road to the old pictures was another case in point of you have to be there. It seems a little more open these days - well-tended, and for good reason. Throw a little more growth on either side and you can see why the battle was drawn there. These guys were shooting field artillery at massed troops at a range of 30 yards. Good God.
I haven't visited Cold Harbor yet but someone above mentioned it as haunted ground. Maybe next summer...