Leading Tours

J. D. Petruzzi has an excellent post about leading tours of obscure places as his first real blog entry. Those of you who know me, or who have been long-time readers of this blog, know that there are few things that I enjoy more than seeing or visiting really obscure places. I love visiting really obscure placs that few if anyone ever visits.

I especially love leading tours of obscure places. Let’s face it: most serious students of the Civil war have seen the site of Pickett’s Charge. I have never found Pickett’s Charge even remotely interesting–in fact, it bores me–and I’ve walked it four or five times in my life. If I never hear of it again, it won’t bother me a bit. It’s not a site I need or want to spend any more time on.

What I enjoy are the sites of the obscure skirmishes–JD’s focus on the brief encounter between the 26th Pennsylvania Emergeny Infantry and Jubal Early’s division on June 26, 1863 is an excellent example of what I mean here. I’d driven by the monument to that encounter more times than I can count, and I had never noticed it. I really love finding those out of the way spots–which often interest nobody but me–and learning about them.

Once I learn about those out of the way spots, few things give me greater pleasure than sharing that knowledge. I REALLY enjoy leading tours. I like giving folks my interpretations of events and showing them those obscure places that I enjoy so much. Perhaps it’s in the hope that others will find them as intriguing as I do. Perhaps it’s a way of indulging my frustrated inner teacher. No matter what, there simply aren’t a lot of things that I enjoy more than leading tours of battlefield sites.

This year, I’ve led tour groups at Monroe’s Crossroads, Gettysburg, Trevilian Station, Yellow Tavern, and Haw’s Shop. With the very notable exception of Gettysburg, these are not spots that typically get much in the way of visitation. I’ve been to Trevilian Station a couple of dozen times over the course of my life, and I have never seen anyone else touring the battlefield on any visit. I’ve never seen anyone else at Haw’s Shop, or at Yellow Tavern.

Monroe’s Crossroads is a completely different story. It’s nestled among the artillery drop zones in the middle of Fort Bragg, and it almost requires an act of Congress to get permission to go out there. If the 82nd Airborne is there–and not on deployment–it’s pretty much impossible to get out there because they’ll be drilling. It’s not much of a surprise, therefore, that I’ve never seen anyone else out there other than guys in camouflage uniforms when I’ve been out to visit the battlefield.

I view it as part of my responsibility to share whatever knowledge I might have with people, and part of that–probably the most enjoyable part of it–is leading people on battlefield tours. If I could make a living doing it, I would do so in a heartbeat. Sadly, though, unless you’re Ed Bearss, it’s generally not possible to make a living that would enable anyone to exist at a standard of living higher that poverty level. Some of the National Park Service historians undoubtedly do better than that, but those jobs are, of course, very few and far between. So, it means that I practice law full time and indulge my Civil War jones as often as I can.

But I will always derive great pleasure from leading battlefield tours, and it will always be something I will want to do whenever possible.