The Marker

I’m on something of a mission, not simply marking time.
I’m looking for a vista – an open, bald hilltop where I might get a look around, maybe snap a picture or two.
See what it was like.

But why…?

Well, this area, between Murfreesboro and the southwestern suburbs of Nashville…this is my goal and so I poke around.
I don’t know the hill, or the valley, or really most details about where my Ancestral Grandfather, R.R. Banker, might have put down his boots but I am armed with a few battle names related to towns and areas.
And, I’m outfitted with Google maps.

But, my blitzkrieg is not well blitzed…or is it krieged?
I’m floundering.

I notice markers, I crane my neck, at markers – many markers.
Wheelers This and Ezells That maybe a Doctors something-or-other.
R.R. Banker isn’t named on any marker – I don’t know why I’m looking – he hadn’t done anything.
He wasn’t born in that house, didn’t massacre natives on that bluff, probably didn’t single-handedly warn the General of the enemies position late one night.

He hadn’t died on these battlefields – no marker.

Ha, I’ve found my hilltop – Haley’s Lane.
The nature was fascinating enough, I’m still strangely drawn here.
Tumultuous insects, stiff winds crossing the trees and angering the grass.

I’ve found it!
I exert my technology on the event and take with me, a picture.

Ok – been there, done that, marked it with a P, hastening back to my rental ca – wait.

Just wait.
…
Turn back to the grass and the field and the tumult and the sun and the wind and the shape of the hills and just wait…and…inhale deeply.

For a small moment – I flush with a flood of realization of this place.
It’s any spring day, and except for the pavement it’s much the same as it was then,
150 years ago.
Maybe he was here,
then,
a marked man.

I’m motoring away and…oooh? Another marker; I wonder if…what happened here? Do I recognize that name…?
Ya know…
He’s not on that marker.
He isn’t going to be on those markers, not a single one.

because…

He lived.
He fought, he protected, he endured, he may have even killed, but on that field, or many just like it – he lived.
And after that, he had a family.
The flood is back because you know…I’ve just found his marker.

On that hill…his marker…I was there.
I’m his marker.