First of Many

     Have you ever had a "feeling" for a place or thing?  I mean that intangible vibe or sensation that you can't quite describe or put into words, but you know it's there as well as you know your own name.  I think we all have at some point or another in our lives.  Maybe it's the familiarity of your grandmother's living room, or the sense memory of a smell that hits you blindside and yet takes you not just to a specific place or time, but to a specific moment.  Maybe the moment of your first kiss or the death of your first pet or something as simple and benign as a math test in the sixth grade.
     I was coming home the other day from a doctor's appointment or grocery shopping or whatever and a similar feeling hit me, but not quite the same, and I realized that I have felt it before, and have felt it so often that I hardly realize it anymore.
     It was a feeling of history, of the past as present, and being all around me.
     I live in and am from the north-central part of North Carolina.  There is nothing particularly special about the area, except that it's where I'm from so I'm kind of partial to it.  
     There is a bit of historical significance here.  The Battle of Guilford Court House took place here, although I don't think it quite gets the credit it deserves.  (Think of it as a variation on the Alamo, except Americans versus Brits instead of Texans versus Mexicans.)  The very road that I live on was part of the "escape" route used by Corwallis after the battle.
     Going even further back there is the The Battle of Alamance, which, as I was taught in college, was a precursor to the Revolutionary War.  Taxation and representation and all that, don't ya know.  They lost, but they did not forget.
     Growing up we had a school trip to a church cemetery not three miles from my rural elementary school where we were to learn about the people buried there.  I remember that some of the grave markers dated to the late 1700's.  I remember this because that was one of the main points of the lesson.  I also remember my classmates making impressions of the dates with their pencils and paper.  We were in the fourth grade, and for them it seemed no big deal.  To me the very act seemed disrespectful and macabre.
     But the most vivid memory, and the one that has stayed with me the strongest is the memory of walking back, away from the road, down into the woods, and seeing the various fieldstones just lying around in the leaves.  This wasn't common, because in those parts agriculture had always been the primary means of income.  Yes, the county courthouse was next door, but...  These stones would have been removed to make plowing the ground easier.  Even right behind a church.  They were grave markers for slaves.  No name, but a stone to mark the grave.  I remember the sudden gravitas of this knowledge.  It was real.  It was not just something that we read about in books.  I also remember the looks on the faces of my black classmates.  Appalled doesn't even begin to cover it.  The representative from the church even made a point to say how nice and generous it was of the white slave owners to not just let them be buried in that cemetery, but they let them mark the graves too.
     Not far into the woods, a short way from the house I grew up in (In which up I grew?) there is a sunken in place in the literal middle of the woods.  There is an old stone marking a grave, there is the markings for the foundation of a house that by today's standards might be an oversized closet.  If I remember correctly the well is still marked.  Trees have grown up all around it.  There is no road leading to it, which leads me to believe that it must have been abandoned at least a century ago.  I only know of its existence because my childhood friend and I stumbled upon it wandering through the woods one day.  The property is owned by my cousin's husband's family (oddly enough his mom was my Kindergarten teacher's assistant), and they know about this old homestead, but they know nothing about the people who lived there.
     What do these anecdotes mean?  Why am I posting this?  I don't really know, except that they are examples of what I mean when I say intangible feeling.  They are not nostalgia.  Please do not think that.  Some of these thoughts and memories I would gladly let go if I could.  I am haunted by the past.  Not just my own personal past (so many of us are) but the past of all of us, the past that should inform and enlighten, and yet goes unseen by those around me.  Haunted?  Yes, for they do seem as ghosts sometimes.  They never frighten, though.  For me they only sadden.