A Special Place

this is something i wrote after i went to Antietam. it was for school initially.

If there was a fire in your house and you had only one minute to get out, what would you take? I, would take nothing. Nothing you say? Yes, only my memories. My memories are things that cannot be burned, drowned, lost or forgotten. If something means something to me, I will never forget.

For Winter Break I took a trip to Antietam, the bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War. Oh, how boring you might think. But, this beautiful, majestic land of where beaten soldiers had fallen, had imprinted a special memory into me.

When we finally got to the battlefield, all of us piled out of the car. Lillian and I got a head start. Of course knowing my mother, on my i-pod there was a track we were supposed to listen to when we were touring the area around us. But I of course, scrolled down to shuffle and started our adventure.  

We climbed a hill. When we got to the top Lillian and I were looking out over the whole battle field. Rolling hills, gray sky, green marsh, corn fields, thousands of trees. Before this, I hadn’t ever seen what true beauty really was. It was breathtaking. I felt very special at that moment, that I was so lucky to have been witnessing one of God’s most unique, exquisite, and stunning sights. I felt as if nothing could touch me, I was invincible, that not even Death could scare me away from this beautiful world.

From then on, I haven’t been afraid of life being snatched away from me, because even though everywhere we look we seem to find something terrible, there is still at least one thing, as simple and natural as a battle field, to make you feel unconquerable.