Kristen and I visited Gettysburg in early October. I’ve been putting off posting these photos since then, trying to think of something intelligent to write about that place.

The truth is I can’t. I don’t understand how the men there stood in lines and exchanged gunfire with no cover, can’t understand how others charged fortified positions, can’t understand what made them do it. Has the selfless part of me that believed in higher causes dulled in the past decade or so – it must have been there at one point, otherwise why would I have volunteered for the Navy? And whether that is truly the cause or not, how could I correlate my life with the lives of those men of a different age and understand them?

Maybe that’s what draws me to that place. To history. I’m trying to understand that which I can not, hoping to find something in that dirt and in the intervening century-and-a-half to help me understand. And that is really all I have to say on the subject. For now. I just wanted an excuse to post a few of these photos.