The farther north I go, the closer I get to the stories I’ve read while preparing for this ride. Escaping from Alabama or Mississippi was harder than escaping from Kentucky. I’ve ridden something like 500 miles from Alabama to Tennessee— in daylight, with fancy navigation tools, on established roads, on a bicycle— and no one’s trying to kill or capture me. It’s staggering to imagine the determination it must have taken to travel through the brambles, fields, and forests here, at night, with only the North Star and the rivers to guide them. I’m looking forward to getting to Kentucky and Ohio where I have at least a little knowledge about these stories.
To pull the past deep inside, it helps to have something to latch onto: a name, a place. When I rode the Lewis and Clark route, I got to sit pretty much at the spot where William Clark sketched the headwaters of the Missouri River. I saw the Gallatin, Madison and Jefferson Rivers near where they converged, and could imagine Clark sketching that famous map.
There’s nothing like that here. The places, the routes , even the names are erased. I think that changes as I get closer to Ohio.
I’ve started listening to the audio book, The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon Reed. That was the point she made in her introduction. She talks about the rich historical data that’s available about slave ships arriving on the continent, but with all that data, something is missing: names. Ship manifests referred to “cargo.” It’s tempting to read her books as “gotcha’” documents because Thomas Jefferson’s slave, Sally Hemings bore several of his children. But that misses the point. Without the Hemings celebrity status, we would have no remembered names for her family.
I rode on back roads through Tennessee hills, climbing, then coasting, then climbing again, noting the variety of homes: double wides, modest bricK houses, ranch houses, even a few mansions set back behind huge manicured lawns.
I was surprised by the sign: Shiloh National Military Park. And just as suddenly, I realized, I was riding through a battlefield, a huge battlefield where 1000s is soldiers fought, retreated, regrouped, and fought again through confusion and terror for two days. These beautiful, peaceful fields were all that remained of the cataclysm of death and destruction. 23,000 casualties.
I didn’t come prepared for this. The route just happens to pass through the park. But I’m surprised how easy it was to sense what happened there in 1862.
There’s no Underground Railroad national park, as far as I know, just scattered stories barely remembered. There are anti-democratic voices emerging in Russia, in China, and in white supremacist groups in the USA. In this world view, freedom means weakness. But freedom is not weak. And we can only be led to believe that it’s weak if we suppress the history of the people like Harriet Tubman and John Parker who traveled the hard road to freedom.
Shiloh
This is AWESOME, David! I'm so happy you rode through my little village of Grand Rivers and I had the pleasure of meeting you! I look forward to learning more through your adventures!!
I appreciate the issues you bring up for consideration and thought. Thank you, David ~ Lee