Antietam

Tonight we went to see the lights of Antietam. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Antietam was a civil war battle and the bloodiest day in American history on American soil, with 23110 causalities (dead, wounded, and missing). Every December they commemorate the battle by placing 23110 luminaries on the battlefield.

We drove, with some friends, 1.5 hours to get there, waited 3 hours in line (in our car!), then it took about a hour to drive through the battlefield, plus another 1.5 hours to return. We had a good time jabbering in the car and were grateful for fun friends to join us on this journey!

It was worth it. It was by far the most poignant display of the value and loss of human life that I have experience and seen. It is one thing to be told 23110 lives were forever altered or destroyed that day, it is a different thing to be surrounded by lights and get an idea of the vastness of such a figure. It was incredibly powerful, both in the telling of the story of that one day in history, and of all other catastrophes in which so many loose their lives.

Here are some of the poor pictures I was able to get on my phone - please google it yourself to see it!


(here we finally made it! You can see what the luminaries basically look like)

 Rows upon rows of lights...