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dants of ‘immigrants’, that great political bogeyman of today. The boys in the death struggle that day were from Vermont and Virginia and all the other places now united across this “the last, best hope of mankind.
VT Sen. Jeffords Unveiling Monument
None of those boys wanted to die in that forest. Like all of us, thoughts of home dominated their visions of and hopes for life. The Virginian’s may well have longed for the misty profile of the Blue Ridge or “to see that rolling river” in the valley to its west. Coffin reports that Vermont soldiers’ letters home are filled with references to a landmark in the Green Mountains of their home state: “I want to see Camel’s Hump again.” “Oh to be sugaring up by old Camel’s Hump.” Surely they had no intent of resting for eternity in the woods of Central Virginia, where some of them almost certainly still remain, unwilling, but most worthy ‘immigrants’ to the Old Dominion. Since they and/or their spirits cannot leave the battlefield, it seems most fitting that a huge chunk of the mountain they so longed for has been brought to them. As the magnificent blue Vermont flag dropped from the graven stone and the bugler played taps, one was reminded that wherever our origins and regardless of the strings that tug at our individual hearts, there are common, vital threads that link us all.
We overlook and take so many things for granted. But, if you have occasion to travel the Brock Road, pause an extra moment at that stop sign in the forest to contemplate how the nearby piece of rock from Vermont’s Green Mountains, and what it stands for, transcend all the petty differences that sometimes divide us.
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