DC Reflections

Crying on Thoreau's cabin

Concord, Mass -- My tears surprised me this morning, probably because they burst from my eyes before I got out of my car. The mere sight of a sign pointing to Walden Pond was all it took for the gusher to start.

The place and the man who made it famous had lived only in my imagination for two and a half decades before I finally made today's pilgrimage. My relationship with Henry David Thoreau began when I was in high school. Today I found myself sitting on the very spot that held his cabin ... the place where he wrote so many of the words that would guide me through my life to find its joys and comfort me in its pains.

I pulled out my own journals today and sat on one of the stones that marks the outline of where his cabin stood.

I see Walden Pond as he saw it from this very door. This place is so much more magnificent than I had imagined. People have always told me that the pond was small and the area too developed. Though I can imagine the tiny beach fills with swimmers and sunbathers on warm days, this is on the other side. The pond is a big one as ponds go and more resembles a small lake.

Here, in the back of the woods where Thoreau lived, it is quiet. I hear only the sounds of acorns falling, the leaves rustling in the wind while turning red and yellow by the moment, birds chirping, and the occasional person passing by. A few fat drops of this morning's rain pelt these pages as they dive from the tree tops. This place seems filled with as much solitude now as it did then.

If you have not had the occasion to get to know Thoreau yourself, you should race to a book store and buy a copy today. It could change your life the way it did mine. Thoreau can help you figure out what's important, give you the courage to do things you didn't know you could do, and make you see the world as if your eye sight suddenly magnified. He'll also give you a giggle or two. (The scholars often forget the man could crack a joke or two.)

I took Thoreau's words to heart at an early age because he spoke to me both about the meaning of life and what it means to be a writer.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately," he wrote, "to front only the essential facts of life, and see if i could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ... I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, and to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

He also placed inside me a land conservation ethic before I knew what the term meant. (It's certainly no coincidence that I now work as a communications director for The Wilderness Society.) He affirmed my love of solitude. He taught me the virtue of living simply. He showed me that a man can in the course of his time get as much out of life as he puts back into it.  

Perhaps more important than any of those things, he helped give me the courage to chase every wild dream I conjured up ... to spend my life taking big swings, to overcome failure, and, well, to thump my chest a little when I pulled off something spectacular.

"As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up."

Thoreau's words lingered in my head as I sat there scribbling in my own journal, whose pages are now

approaching 7,000 in number. I wrote that I could sit there all day writing about how much Thoreau means to me but that I could do more of that later.

Now I think it's time to honor him by continuing my own walk in the woods so that I might drink in this experience more deeply. I can spend all day here if I want. "Time," after all, "is but the stream I go a fishing in."

Then I pulled out the dog-eared copy of Walden Pond I've kept with me for the past 17 years -- its pages held together with equal parts hope and tape -- and read a few passages aloud to myself.

I resumed my walk and felt Thoreau's presence so strongly that I kept staring at the mud as if expecting to see his footprints and discern which way he was going today. My mind, as it always does when I get a good hike going, slowed down. Part of the reason I came on this trip was to think more about some of the new dreams I harbor for what I'd like to do with my life in the years ahead ... to set a few compass points that I might check each morning.

I inhaled a quick lunch and drove to the Concord Museum to see Thoreau's desk. I also saw one of the lanterns placed above Boston as old Paul Revere made his famous ride. Both artifacts were thrilling discoveries as I didn't know the museum existed before today.

Nor did I realize Thoreau was buried here and that his grave still exists.

I quickly found his resting place at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and was overcome in a different way, feeling an urge to pull out my journal again and write him a letter. It went like this:

Dear Mr. Thoreau,

I sit now by your grave, Mr. Thoreau. I confess I only moments ago learned I've been mispronouncing your name all these years. A woman at the Concord Museum said you pronounced it like you were a very thorough man, not like I throw a baseball. Everybody else gets it wrong, too, so I hope you can forgive us.

I can't believe how tiny your tombstone is. It's like a baby's. It can't be more than nine inches high and wide. And it just says "Henry." No epitaph. No nothing. Your name and birth and death dates are as you know with the rest of your family's. I see your parents John and Cynthia and your siblings Helen and Sophia.

I guess I expected something grand, something that in death represents how big you were -- though I realize your fame multiplied by an infinite factor as the years went on after you died. Still, it's puzzling. Such a humble little stone for a man who made such a big impact on the world -- not only during your time but in the generations that have followed.

I came here today to thank you for everything you've done for me. I'm not really sure how to properly thank a dead man but I at least wanted to visit you to pay my respects. I've known you for more than half of my life, which puts you in the company of but a select few of my friends.

How do I thank you? You saw that I spent the morning at your cabin by Walden Pond. I could feel your presence there as I do here. You must still entertain a lot of company these days. I see a note on your grave and that some people have built tiny little cabins with twigs. I see someone left coins in a language I don't recognize. Russian maybe. I see someone else left a tiny piece of metal with perhaps Chinese characters on one side and the English word "balance" on the other. A group of German students just came. I see that note is from a pair of people from Galicia, Spain, and they left their names for you. I'm not sure if you read Spanish but Irisarri and Maria left you the note. It says "All of us who love nature are in debt to you, father of conservation and grandfather of ecology."

Even 147 years after your death, you continue to touch the minds and hearts of people around the world. You have clearly achieved what every writer, and would-be writers like myself who pale in comparison, dreams of -- eternal life. One of my darkest fears, apart from never publishing more than I have now, is that all of my words -- my magazine articles, news reports, newspaper columns, blogs and these journal pages will also disappear with me when I move on from this world.

This moment of self pity aside, I do want to thank you again for what you've done for me. I'm wearing your face on my shirt right now and everybody is asking me where I got it and what my connection is to you, H.D. (I hope you don't mind I have long called you that.) I told a woman who is on the board of The Thoreau Society I met this morning that you have guided me through much of my life. I guess you heard that but I wanted to tell you again. Your words expanded my mind at a tender age and made me think the world offered me much greater potential for living greatly than I might have otherwise believed. You at different times helped build my internal compass and at others helped me stay true to it.

One of my worst fears in college -- one that I rebelled against -- was that I would graduate and go work a normal job to the day I die without ever having truly embraced life. Thanks in part to you, I ventured to Alaska and to Spain and had all kinds of adventures -- not only in travel but in the personal and professional facets of my life. For the most part, I have made mighty good use of the time I've had on this planet. I've certainly sucked a lot of marrow out of it. I've always made consistent efforts to give back to the world, too, again following distantly in your footsteps.

I credit your hand as among the most influential, the most responsible, for so many of the best decisions I've made in my life. I am truly grateful beyond what I have the words to express.

You will live in my heart forever, and I hope that you continue to bless me with your guidance.

Sincerely,

Christopher D. Lancette

Standing in awe -- and uncertainty -- in revolutionary Boston

BOSTON -- Studying the history of the American Revolution sometimes feels more like mud wrestling than an intellectual pursuit. Even after all the years, libraries, documents and road trips, I just can't quite get my arms around it and pin it down. I don't know why I'm surprised that my life-long dream of coming to Bean town is proving to be yet another couple of rounds in the pit.

My day started with awe.

I hit The Freedom Trail this morning, notebook and cameras in hand -- my mind spinning in anticipation of seeing sights I have known only as words and photographs for so long. "Captain John Hodgkins" led me along a guided tour that left me hanging on his every word. Every time he pointed and drew a deep breath, I bounded in that direction. Dressed in colonial attire of a gentleman, he told us about the history of the founding of this city and then bellowed out some of the highlights of the revolution that began here.

I bowed my head at the Granary Burying Ground and paid respects to James Otis, one of the not-as-well-remembered heroes of what became the freedom movement. He was the lawyer who argued against the writs of assistance for four hours, imploring that the British Crown not be allowed to enter anyone's house with a flimsy document and confiscate anything they find. His effort fell on deaf ears, but John Adams said he thought the Revolution started on that day. I gave just as much reverence to the likes of Paul Revere and to what modern history still records as victims of the Boston Massacre.

That's where it gets muddy.

The truth is that the Americans antagonized the British troops that fateful day. In the freezing cold winter, they hurled oyster shells and everything else they could find at the soldiers. Tension was still running high over the shooting of a boy by a lobster back a week earlier. We didn't have time to get into this kind of detail on the tour but I've read enough accounts of the events of that event to understand how the soldiers could have lost their composure. That didn't make firing on the colonists right but I have to at least acknowledge their mobbish behavior.

I'm still not sure what to make of everything that unfolded that day (March 5, 1770), but I am adamant that the site of those deaths should be better heralded than it is now. The spot where five people died and that ignited revolutionary fervor is now marked but by street bricks on a tiny traffic island outside the Old State House. People step all over it crossing the street and many clueless passersby probably don't even know what the spot is. I didn't even see a sign. I suspect that the everyday tourist in the group would've passed right over it without knowing what it was were it not for our captain.

I just don't quite get how a place that should be much more hallowed ground became something that people simply stomp all over. I realize that in 2009 it would be nearly impossible to fix the problem -- there's no room to re-route the roads.

Still. Couldn't something have been done earlier?

I returned to awe on my next few stops.

At Faneuil Hall, I sat there quietly imagining all the debates and community meetings that took place more than two centuries ago. Then I hopped on the T and took the train out to Quincy to visit the homes of my very favorite Founding Father, Mr. Adams. He is to me the most accessible of the bunch. The most human. The most open and expressive with his emotions and his thoughts. I can relate to his joy's and wallow in his pains. I can feel his ego bruisings. I can identify with his shortcomings: He hid them not.

I toured his birth home, walked next door to the home he later occupied with Abigail, the great love of his life. Every man and woman should be so lucky as to have a bond like what they shared.

I moved on to the home, "Peace field" where John and Abigail spent the rest of their lives. Its' where they listened in horror as surgeons cut into their daughter's breasts with a saw trying to remove a tumor. It's where John wrote and read so much of famous correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, a man with whom his relationship rode a roller coaster over their decades of friendship and service to this nation. Some of the words they exchanged in their final years are the most touching to me and I've now stood in each of the very rooms where they read and wrote the other -- and, of course, where both died within hours of each other on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

I did not realize John Adams died in his study. The National Park Service tour guide explained that once his wife died, the old president could bear no more nights in their bedroom.

I thought I was going to end Monday's history exploration in the high note of the good company of John and Abigail. Both of them are heroes of mine, by the way, and I have spent an extraordinary amount of time in their graces. I've held original letters he wrote from France and I've even touched an alleged lock of her hair. (History groupies find access to these kinds of experiences.)

A ride back to Boston led me to a mudslide.

I entered the Boston Public Library at Copley Square and camped out in the beautiful reading room with a stack of books on the Revolution after marveling at the architecture of the building. The most compelling read was "Black Courage 1775-1783: Documentation of Black Participation in the Revolutionary War," by Robert Ewell Greene in 1984.

At the risk of sounding like the kind of politically correct blowhard I disdain, it is absolutely a self-evident truth that the contribution of African-Americans to the American Revolution have been largely overlooked by popular history. I've intended to do more with this idea but I have so many different Revolutionary research projects going I can't seem to finish one of them. The questions the author poses and begins to answer, though, are worth discussing.

Greene stated that the two essential questions that face Americans of color are what the Revolution has to do with them, and why black people would fight for a nation that held them in slavery. He wrote that the answers can only be obtained by first gaining a better understanding of the full facts surrounding black participation in the war.

As the sun set and the sky outside the giant windows in the library went dark, I delighted in Greene's clear, direct writing. No high-brow academic stuff here.

In short, he wrote that black men suffered just like their white counterparts in the war. Robert Green took a musket ball in the face. Thomas Lively lost his right eye in a battle and lost his leg in another. Caesar Skelton got stabbed in the back. An estimated 5,000 black men and women gave themselves to the cause of liberty -- their nation's and their own in hopes a victorious country would make good on its promise of freedom to those who served in Washington's army.

Why is this important to us today? I see it, as I believe Greene does, as a matter of simple fairness. A matter of telling a complete and unvarnished story about the full participation in the war that gave us this country. I've thought all day about what metaphor I might use to make this point. My first thought was naturally to compare telling an incomplete story to the idea of describing a beautiful woman but leaving out key details like the color of her eyes or the shape of her cheekbones. That doesn't do it justice, though.

As I sat here getting some directions from google for tomorrow's itinerary, I realized that failing to include the participation of African-Americans in the Revolutionary War would be like leaving out countless key turns when you're giving someone directions to an important destination. The poor sucker might not ever get there, or know how exactly he made it if he did manage to blindly stumble across it.

Time for me to go wash the mud off my hands. My wake up call is but hours away and there's much to explore tomorrow. 

An army recruiter's toughest challenge: me

March 29, 2009 Sunday

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania -- Considering the turmoil America is in, it has got to be tough to be an Army recruiter like Sgt. Jeff Blessing. He can't lie to potential recruits: the hours can be long, the duty dangerous, and the pay but a pittance. Heat can annihilate you in the summer and you can freeze in the winter. Weapons can be hard to come by and their accuracy even more arduous to obtain.

Still, the sergeant knows he has a fish on the hook in the form of yours truly. I have approached him hesitantly, equal parts and excited and scared. My questions reveal that I've long thought about putting my love of liberty to the test, of defending my country, yet they can not mask the fact that I am for all practical purposes a city slicker. Never been much for sleeping on the ground, missing meals, or firing guns. I'm very athletic but I've got flat feet that make standing still a challenge and I already suffer from a constant ringing in my left ear. I can't even ride a horse.

Sgt. Blessing does have a few things on his side of the ledger, though. There's the spirit of adventure, patriotism, and those beautiful blue uniforms. Ah yes, the ladies do love a man in uniform.

The army man hands me an application. Just sign here, son, he says. We'll take care of you.

I walk away for the moment, afraid of making such a commitment. I tell the sergeant I'll be back. I need to think about it some. Maybe talk to my folks.

Not only will I be leaving home, I'll be stepping back in time -- all the way to the late 1770s. Sgt. Blessing, after all, is seeking men to join the Second Pennsylvania Regiment of The Continental Line -- a nonprofit, educational organization whose mission is to accurately depict American troops during the American Revolution. He and his brother-in-arms Jim Liddle also make ends meet in these uncertain economic times by adding to the ranks of the King's 43rd of Foot. (Don't spread that word 'round these parts. Blessing and Liddle are good men and they don't think the lobster backs are going to prevail in the end anyway.)

I turn my attention to other interests for the remainder of the "The Lock, Stock, and Barrel" Revolutionary War symposium sponsored by The Friends of Valley Forge Park.

All of the lectures stimulate my brain.

Philander Chase probes the mind of George Washington. Chase spent 35 years in the company of our first commander in chief, retiring recently as the editor of The Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia. Chase may know the general better than any many alive yet even he can't answer one of history's mysteries: Why did Washington suddenly change his penmanship? No one knows.

I sit a spell with Jim Hollister, a National Park Service ranger and education coordinator at Minute Man National Historical Park in Massachusetts. He delivers a riveting presentation examining the age-old riddles of what really happened at both Lexington and Concord. He weaves eye-grabbing photographs and gripping eye-witness accounts into his remarks, which end with me on the edge of my seat using my i-phone to check the price of train tickets to Boston. I later go out to dinner with him and his fiance Emily Murphy, a historian at Salem Maritime National Historic Site, and discover they are both sterling personal representatives of the park service. They're good people, as we say back in my parts.

I peek in on Valley Forge in 1778, where Paul Lockhart of Wright State University is recounting the fantastic story of how Prussian immigrant Friedrich de Steuben showed up on Washington's doorstep, convinced him that he could transform his army into a disciplined fighting force, and promptly proved himself worthy of the post. Lockhart's book, "The Drillmaster of Valley Forge"  is next on my reading list, though it pains me to think I didn't later ask him to sign a copy for me while he was standing right next to me -- at Valley Forge -- with his book in my hands.

Scribbling notes as has been my occupational and educational hazard for more than 20 years, I struggle to keep up with Thomas McGuire -- author of "Battle of Paoli" and of a book that's the subject at hand this day: His high-octane tour across The Philadelphia Campaign serves as yet another reminder of how much more I still have to learn about the Revolution, a subject that has long been the focus of a great deal of my energy.

I wish the conference could last longer but the clock is ticking on the weekend. I head back to Valley Forge for a very special tour -- a "behind the closed vaults" experience lead by NPS ranger Scott Houting. Most people quickly turn their attention to the authentic muskets, swords and powder horns that are always the eye candy of Revolutionary War exhibits. Behind locked doors, however, my eyes are immediately drawn to something that cranks up my heart rate.

No way, I think.

Yes way. Sitting before me is a letter written in 1777 by Washington's artillery commander, the Boston bookseller turned military genius who also became America's first Secretary of War -- Henry Knox, one of my all-time faves. But this is not just any letter. It is one of the very kinds of letters I have been studying lately for a magazine essay I'm working on. It's a love letter to his wife, Lucy. Of the great many poignant exchanges during the Revolutionary War, few are more touching than the favors traded by this pair. 

"I have received my dearest love letter of the 25th ultimo," he begins. "I want words to express the pleasure it gave me." 

The sweet sentiment rolls through the course of the missive and endears me yet more to the general and to his wife -- a woman of British parents who made great personal sacrifices to marry and stay loyal to her rebel husband.

I couldn't imagine a more beautiful way to take leave of the Lock, Stock, and Barrel event but I knew there was one thing I still needed to do. I followed the sound of the musket and cannon fire to the top of a hill so that I could shake Blessing's hand and affirm that I will consider his offer; I've just got a lot to think about as joining Washington's men would be a serious commitment of time and money.

The good sergeant, though, has my attention -- and every good Army recruiter knows that is truly half the battle. Especially at Valley Forge, where our troops must persevere if America is to have a chance.

Saving history with "my tribe"

March 27, 2009 Friday

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania -- "Where's my tribe?" That's a question I've asked myself many times over the years. I found at least one answer here at Valley Forge National Historical Park where our army spent a grueling winter in 1778 and 1779 and where I spent time today amongst a community with whom I share a great common interest and bond.

In town for the second historical symposium, "Lock, Stock, and Barrel: The World of The Revolutionary War Soldier", I spent the afternoon riding my bike alongside Washington and his men. I have grown quite close to our first commander in chief over the years and sometimes feel his presence more strongly here than I do at his home at Mount Vernon. I looked across the fields and could not fully  imagine what life was like for our troops that winter but listening to their stories through my cell phone at stops along the way made it seem even more personal. Like they were right there in front of me. Breaking a comfortable sweat in my summer clothes and top-of-the-line tennis shoes, my heart reached out to the men who stood barefoot in the snow.

After a quick shower, I returned to the visitor's center for a kickoff reception sponsored by The Friends of Valley Forge Park -- organizer of the weekend workshop. I quickly realized I belonged with this group ... people who think about the same things I do and who have the same passions, fears and hopes.

These are people, patriots all, who seek to share our love of American history and the Revolution in particular. We are also people trying to prevent its death.

A demise of history -- the failure to pass to the next generation the joy of learning what it can teach us and how it can inspire us -- would be a crippling blow to our culture. History is what sets forth the virtues and ideals that we as a nation strive to uphold. It's also the wildly exciting account of how flawed people just like us managed to overcome their own limitations and global events to give us all the opportunities to pursue our own happiness in whichever ways we choose. The struggles they faced, though different in time and technology, are challenges that offer insight for us today.

History is not fairing very well, though. It's hardly taught in school anymore and the people who love it the most won't be with us much longer. Already facing decreasing political support before the economy crashed, federal and state funding for historical places and programs sits with its neck exposed to a chopping block.

People like Michael and Michelle Harris can read the diagnosis as well as anyone. The husband and   wife  who work for Brandywine Battlefield Park and Lower Perkiomen Valley Park are on the front lines of the battle to plant seeds of excitement in the hearts and minds of more citizens. Picking up on the common thread of conversation that night, they talked about how important it is for history lovers to reach out and expand the base. (I frequently lament that history is often the domain of old white male, white collar men --even if I'm nearing a three-for-three on the demographic myself.) 

When their generation passes, who will be there to advocate for the gold mine of civic engagement that history inspires? Who will provide the grassroots political and financial support for institutions like Valley Forge and those the Harris duo works for? Who will be left to tell America's story and and guide us in the fight for her future?

Michael and Michelle feel the urgency of passing the torch to more hands. Greeting every visitor they meet as if it may be America's last chance to spark an interest in her history, they talk to old and young. They talk to white, black and every shade in between ... to the rich and to the struggling. Though they may never know the fruits of their labor, Michelle is constantly energized by stories she heard about the impact she made as a 19-year-old museum intern. Unbeknownst to her at the time, she gave a presentation to a young girl who became so enamored with the subject that it propelled her to turn her life around by getting interested in school for the first time.

Stories of lives changing through the gentle embrace of history aren't limited to children. Barbara Pollarine, a National Park Service deputy superintendent for Valley Forge, tells the story of a man who was ordered by his doctors to get in shape or face dire consequences. He turned to the park as a site for exercise, falling in love with the place and going on to dedicate his time and talents to its mission.

Don Naimoli, meanwhile, is one of the field generals of that operation. As chairman of The Friends of Valley Forge Park, he is orchestrating plans to protect and preserve the park. The site is sadly sometimes the victim of its own success and needs great upkeep. It must thwart the attacks of land and road development and other challenges. It must advocate for the federal funding needed to run it. He hopes to increase the troops enlisted in the Friends' organization so that more people are able to lend their voices to the cause. Every person who joins gives the volunteer organization that much more muscle and clout.

I could have talked to everyone in that room all night long, and nearly did. I realized it was time to go when only the Friends' board members were left and they had brooms in their hands. I admire everyone I met today and hope to do my part in the coming years to share the thrill of American history with greater numbers of people. I can think of a thousand ways I can use my brain, keyboard and enthusiasm to accomplish exactly that.

I sit here at my hotel room desk tonight still buzzing with the joy of meeting so many people today, and the Lock, Stock and Barrel workshop doesn't even start until Saturday. I see now that this is what it feels like to spend a day uniting with my tribe -- both the living and the dead.

Robbing Father Time in the Idaho mountains

Boise, Idaho -- My heart is pounding and my leg muscles are burning, but I'm on a mission. I alternate between pedaling and walking up a monstrously steep trail in the Camel's Back/Hull's Gulch Reserve in the mountains rising above this little town. Experience tells me something good is waiting for me if I don't give up.

A vivacious young woman and an old white dog come up from behind me. "Just keep going," she says, sweeping her hand to the left. "I think you'll find what you're looking for when you get to that ridge over there."

I propel myself forward, foot by foot, then lean left. I finally lift my head, my eyes going from the dirt ahead, to my handlebars, to ...

Wow.

I see snow-capped mountains off to the right and blue sky stretching out for a million miles. A bush and grass-filled valley unfolds to my left. One bird darts in front of me, while a flock I can't locate puts on a choral performance. The first sun rays of spring kiss me smack on the mouth. I grin like a schoolboy.

The sensory overload is so powerful I don't even feel guilty about picking Father Time's pocket. I think he sensed my crime but chose not to object. He knew how badly I needed those frozen moments -- the first great moments in a three-hour ride that I snuck in after a taxing work-related conference. I hopped in a taxi as soon as it ended, raced out to the Bikes 2 Boards rental shop, and hit the trail head knowing I had but a few precious hours to take in some vistas and find my way back before the shop closed. That would leave me just enough time to make it back to the hotel, pack, crash, and get ready for pre-dawn dash to the airport.

I try to push the clock crunch out of my mind and shove off again. The trail twists and turns, a new National Geographic video awaiting me at every corner. It's just me and a bike and all of God's majesty and I feel like I'm 19 again. Something inside me bursts and I start laughing out loud.

A gurgling sound pulls me around the next bend, a crystal clear creek there waiting for me. I ditch the bike and scoop what moments before was snow on to my face and arms. My skin tingles. I scoop up a few rocks and put them in my backpack, snapping a picture with the Nikon I store between my ears.

A pair of rude interruptions break my trance: I fall flat on my ass while stepping away from the stream; it's an inexplicably hard fall that cakes me in mud. "You dork," I chide myself.

The ego bruising that comes next, though, is worse. I choose to start walking down the trail as the route back is more of a descent than I've tackled in years ... only to be nearly run over by a couple of co-eds that swerve around the old man. It could have been worse -- they could have called me "sir."

I quickly realize I'm not willing to take the mountain biking risks I once used to enjoy. Not on a trail in the middle of nowhere the day before a long pair of flights home. Not when I have to be at work on Monday. I go back and forth between calling myself a coward and a man who has lost his edge and a man with memories of some mountain bike trips gone awry -- a wiser guy whose life now includes the once alien concept of calculated risks.

I think I meet the entire populace of Boise the rest of the way down. Everyone -- from 20-somethings to retirees, asks me if I'm OK. Do I have a flat? Is something wrong? They don't say the words but I know what they're thinking ... why is someone walking down the trail?

"I'm just an Idaho rookie," I decide to start telling people. Got the inquiries over faster.

Almost done, the state of Idaho gives me one more gift: The 15th Street trail clears another ridge and I take in the Boise city sky line. The brownish capitol building looks like it's made of the mountain I'm riding on. I disembark one last time, let the view linger just a little longer, and thank the heavens for letting me rob 'ol Father Time.

Franklin's print shop and the dingy hands of democracy

PHILADELPHIA -- I stand on the cobblestone street in Franklin Court and imagine Ben Franklin walking into his print shop in 1729, the year he and a partner purchased The Pennsylvania Gazette. The one-time apprentice who learned the printing business through the sweat of his brow smiles as he glances at the young men following in his footsteps.

One hovers over a table typesetting the next edition -- reading a hand-written document and then placing tiny metal blocks with letters on them in what looks like a tray with wooden strips forming the borders of what will become printed pages. The physical dexterity required is just part of the man's challenge. He also has to lay in the tiny blocks upside down and backward so that the documents read left to right and right side up when stamped on to a page.

Another man is covered in the black, sticky ink he's applying to a block of type with padded leather  balls. Once properly coated, he inserts into the press a damp piece of cloth that's wet enough to absorb the ink, slides the block in position, and uses his labor-born pectorals and arms to force the block onto the page. He releases the lever, grabs what looks like a brick oven pizza remover, pulls the paper off the press and hangs it on an overhead wrack to dry. Then he steps back to the press to start all over again.

It is grueling, repetitive, and dingy work. It's made worse by the overpowering odor that clings to their hands and attacks their nostril hair ... chamberlye. That's the polite term for the urine-based cleaning solution that had to be applied to the equipment.

Yes, trace the roots of our democracy and you find they pass through chamber pots and come out like Andy Dufresne clean on the other side. You find the un-sung workday heroes who cranked out the newspapers, pamphlets and books that enlightened the colonists and made possible the American Revolution.

Franklin had tremendous admiration and respect for the power the printing press. He also advanced the profession. He was the first to insert cartoons and maps in a newspaper. The May 9, 1754 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette contained America's first political cartoon -- the serpentine "Join, or Die" illustration that called for colonial unity.

I too am awed by what the pressmen of the 18th century achieved.

"Reading's the means by which the lowest man can lift himself up from a state of ignorance," a press owner told a newly arrived colonist in volume one of John Jakes' epic historical fiction series about the Revolution, The Kent Family Chronicles.

My emotional connection to the printing press runs deep. I joined my school newspaper in eighth grade and stayed with it through junior high and high school.

A bright-eyed University of Georgia student back in the long-time-agos, I had the fortune to be the founding managing editor of The Campus Times. The upstart paper sought to compete with the long-standing student paper. I remember the day our first issue thundered through the two-story press bringing our ideas to life: "That's a powerful tool you got there," the old man running the facility said. He implored us to use it wisely.

I have treated the mass-produced word with sacrosanct respect ever since. The reverence has followed me through my careers in journalism and public relations and is in my heart every time I turn on my computer to write on this new-fangled treasure we call the Internet.

I have also had the divine pleasure to hold in my hands numerous, original Revolutionary publications that paved the way for independence and democracy. I've read books owned and inscribed by Thomas Jefferson, other books Franklin himself wrote in, and a first edition of Common Sense.

Through the fortune of knowing the right person, I have also held in my hands a copy of the Declaration of Independence that was among the first to roll off John Dunlap's Philadelphia press on the very afternoon the fellas in the Pennsylvania State House stuck it to 'ol King George. Tears filled my eyes the moment the document was placed in my hands because I recognized immediately that I had reached the zenith of what a patriot and a student of history can experience.

My head was spinning from the thrill.

I poured over the words so familiar to me now and graciously returned the document to its proprietor.

I sat there, stunned, for what seemed like a long time. Then I gave thanks not just to the famous 56 men but to the countless unheralded souls who fought black, sticky ink and pots full of piss to educate our people and give us a nation.   

Philadelphia, my heroes, and the spirit of 1776

I exited the train station in Philadelphia and wasted no time. I spent all of five minutes unpacking at my hotel and headed to hallowed ground.

I walked east along Market Street hardly believing in the vision of what was ahead. My metabolism got the best of me, though, and I had to stop at Burger King before I stepped back to a time when another king was much on the minds of the local populace. A double bacon cheeseburger combo and a few blocks later, there it was.

Independence Hall.

I'll be damned.

It does exist in places other than the pages of the history books and the images of my imagination.

After a lifetime fascination with and study of the American Revolution, I approached the historic hall with all the reverence of a person of faith visiting a holy land. A National Park Service ranger opened the door and I lost my breath. Right there, in that very room, I was communing with the great 56 men who overcame bitter political disagreements and put the common good above all else -- just as another group would do on that exact same spot 11 years later. In my mind, I could hear the reading of Richard Henry Lee's resolution of June 7, 1776:

"Resolved: That these united Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

I saw my beloved John Adams, the Founding Father I am closer to than any other, make a rousing speech on July 2 -- America's true birthday -- that garnered majority support for a Declaration of Independence whose heavily edited drafts longed for approbation. (Unanimity, of course, was the only option, and the congress delayed formal passage until the fourth in order to obtain the votes.) Walking sticks pounded the wooden floor as exclamation points to Adams' gifted oratory. I felt the sweltering heat and frayed nerves of the over-taxed, august body rallying behind him. I picked up the clippety-clop of a horse carrying a rain-soaked delegate arriving at the eleventh hour. I observed Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin taking it all in. I strained to make out a Georgia delegate, Button Gwinnett, whose virtually invisible trail I've chased for the past two years. Perhaps he was a ghost even then.

Standing in Independence Hall in both 2007 and 1776, I was lost in the palpable excitement, fear, uncertainty and bravery of the men committing the treasonous act of disposing a king and giving birth to a new nation. Goosebumps arose as they always do when I think of perhaps their most powerful words:

"We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred honor."

Wow.

Congressional president John Hancock and secretary Charles Thompson signed the hand-written copy and sent it over to the printing shop of John Dunlap, where his crew toiled through the night to reproduce the words ... words that were not given public voice until July 8, when Col. John Nixon of the Philadelphia Committee of Safety read them aloud to the crowd packing the courtyard outside Independence Hall (then known as the State House).

I was completely surprised to realize that the very copy Nixon held in his hands rests in a small room next to the Hall -- in perfect condition 231 years after its debut. My nerves trembled even more a moment later when I saw another American treasure I did not know existed. One of my hobbies is writing letters to special people with a quill feather pen -- my symbolic way of honoring my love for those friendships and and for history. I had no idea I would stumble across the silver Syng inkstand used by the signers of both the Declaration and the Constitution.

Awesome.

Just outside the doors of that hidden gem is the entrance to Congress Hall, home to the U.S. Congress from 1790 to 1800. George Washington took his second oath of office there. I still can't quite get my mind around the enormity of the next great event that unfolded in its confines, when Washington willingly handed the reigns to power to my dear friend Adams.

Said King George III himself of the pending act:

“If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

Washington and Adams are also present a few stone throws away at a lesser known but equally moving corner of the great city: Washington Square, a former burial ground that nows holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution. Words on a wall beside a small statue of our first military commander say what needs to be said:

"Freedom is a light for which men have died in darkness ... Beneath this stone rests a soldier of Washington's Army who died to give you liberty."

Die they did. Thousands of soldiers' coffins were dumped unceremoniously into common pits -- intermingled with sailors, convicts and "the destitute who's remains are walked over."

According to signage at and near the tomb:

"Throughout that winter (1777), disease thinned the ranks of the American army. John Adams, a member of the Continental Congress meeting in Independence Hall, visited the square in April 1777. He spent an hour 'in the congregation of the dead.' The graves of the soldiers, perhaps 2,000 he had been told, 'are enough to make the heart of stone melt away.'"

The tomb is a quiet, solemn place, as it should be, but locals pay it little attention -- and the throngs of tourists just a block away don't seem to care, either ... even though the eternal flame dedicated in 1976 humbly asks for company. I was transfixed by this unexpected site and honored to pay my respects. I stayed there for a long time, almost able to hear the the cries of pain coming from soldiers in their final hour. I wondered what went through their minds as they took their last breaths ... if they thought they were dying for a greater good or a lost cause.

My trance was broken by a bell ringing from the direction of Independence Hall. I hoped the souls of the men buried beneath me could hear the sound -- the same they would have heard upon the signing of the U.S. Constitution a decade later ... a toll letting them know the fledgling nation they gave their lives to creating did in fact survive, and that we are ever-thankful for the sacrifice they made.