Hiking, Part 9

Copyright © 2014 by Ralph F. Couey

I had been looking forward to this day, since circumstance and responsibility kept me off the hiking trails for the last two weeks.  It has been a stressful period and I needed some time in the woods.

After perusing the maps, I chose an AT access along US 522 southeast of Front Royal.  A check of Google Maps Streetview confirmed the presence of a pullout there large enough to park a few cars.  As I left home early in the morning, I noted with satisfaction that it would be a spectacular late-summer day for Virginia.  Temps would stay in the low 80's with low humidity, a great day for hiking.

I found the pullout and after parking and gearing up, I headed south.  There was a lot of up- and down-hill to this section, but I had picked it because 4.2 miles in I would meet Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park.  During the initial ascent, I saw to my right a really nice overlook off a beautiful meadow, the view somewhat restricted by a tall chain link fence, which would accompany me for nearly the whole way.  I'm not sure who owns that property, but they sure wanted it protected.

Civil War: Events of November 1864

On November 4th and 5th, Rebel cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest along with two captured Union boats attacked the Union supply depot at Johnsonville, Tennessee, causing major damage.

Abraham Lincoln defeated his former commanding general of the Army of the Potomac and was awarded his second term as President of the United States.

William T. Sherman began his march to the sea on November 10th. Two days later, he sends a message to General Thomas at Nashville.  It would be the last communication from Sherman until December 13th.

On the 14th, Sherman divided his army into two columns of 30,000 men each, providing a left and right wing to his march.  By the 16th, he had marched almost 100 miles, destroying the cities of Rome, Cartersville, and Marietta.

At Griswoldville on the 22nd, a cavalry action took place, after which Sherman's troops pushed back two regiments of Georgia militia, continuing the Union march.

Another action took place at Buckhead Creek on the 28th when Federal cavalry defeated a Confederate attempt to halt Sherman's advance.

On November 30th, Confederate forces under General Hood attempted to assault the fixed fortifications at Franklin, Tennessee.  He had a brief success penetrating the center of the Federal line, but a heroic counterattack pushed his forces back.  Hood sent his army into the stout defenses repeatedly, essentially destroying his men in the effort.  The Union Commander, John Schofield, was able to extricate his soldiers and pull back to Nashville where he joined up with George Thomas.  Hood lost 14 of his generals either killed, wounded or captured in this battle.

Civil War: Events of October 1864

On the 2nd, Jefferson Davis gives P. G. T. Beauregard command of the Department of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

On the 4th, Confederate General Hood moved north along the Western and Atlantic Railroad, attempting to sever Sherman's supply line, attacking blockhouses and encampments at Acworth and Moon's Station.

Confederate forces under Samuel French attacked Union troops in entrenched positions protecting the W & A Railroad in the Allatoona Pass on the 5th.  Despite fierce fighting, the Federals under John Corse held their ground.

In the Battle of Tom's Brook on October 9th, Sheridan ordered his cavalry to attack Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry which had been harassing his rear.  The Union troopers chased the Southerners for 10 miles, capturing 300 Confederates.  The battle was nicknamed "The Woodstock Races" for the speed of the Confederate withdrawal.  Having burned everything of value in the Valley all the way to Staunton, Virginia, Sheridan withdrew.

On October 13, Maryland voters ratified a new constitution abolishing slavery.

In what was undoubtedly delightful news for General Lee, his old warhorse General Longstreet returned to action after recovering from a friendly fire wound at The Wilderness.

Civil War: Events of September, 1864

On the 1st, Confederates, in the face of Sherman's advancing army, began evacuating the key city of Atlanta.  The next day, the city was surrendered by Mayor James Calhoun.

John Hunt Morgan, the Confederate General who in 1863 undertaken a highly successful raid into Indiana and Southern Ohio, was surprised and killed by Union cavalry on September 4th.

The state of Louisiana took a big step towards re-admittance to the Union when, on September 5th, voters who had taken the oath of loyalty to the United States, voted to ratify a new state constitution which abolished slavery.  On that same day, Unionists in Tennessee met in Nashville with the aim of re-starting the state government, as well as participating in the national elections in the fall.

On the 7th, the USS Wachusett captured the Confederate warship CSS Florida at Bahia, Brazil.

Confederate General Joe Wheeler completed his raid into North Georgia, returning to Southern lines on the 10th.

Has Enough Been Given?

Order of the Purple Heart

Photo from the United States Marine Corps

Copyright © 2014 by Ralph F. Couey

Written content only

In recent months, yet another Middle Eastern crisis erupted when a band of Sunni militants calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria -- ISIS -- formed themselves an army and began taking back the nation of Iraq.  For a stateless group, they have been shockingly successful.  But they have proven themselves to be singularly sadistic conquerors.  So intractably brutal are they that even al-Qa'ida cut ties with them in February of this year.  ISIS is a hard-line jihadist group with the aim of establishing an Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, rigidly enforcing Sharia Law.  In the cities they have conquered, civilians have been brutally executed for no other reason than being Shia Muslims or Christians.  This murder has included the beheading of children, according to the United Nations.  What is just as shocking has been their treatment of women, kidnapping, torturing, raping, and killing them.

The United States expended the lives of over 4,000 soldiers removing a dictator from power and turning the country over to it's people.  Included in that effort was the training and equipping of some 65,000 Iraqi soldiers to defend their country, allowing US combat troops to be withdrawn by December 2011.  

ISIS, consisting of an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 soldiers should have been overwhelmed by the Iraqis armor, artillery, and soldiers.  But in what anyone in the west would consider an act of cowardly betrayal, the Iraqi Army melted away, the individual soldiers whispering "Insha'Allah", literally, "If Allah wills it" as they ran.

My 500th Post

Copyright © 2014 By Ralph F. Couey

November 3, 2006.  That was the day I went to the Blogger website and officially opened "Race the Sunset" with a post about Ben Rothlesberger's motorcycle accident.  Tonight, some 7 years and 9 months later, I am penning the 500th post on this blog.

Writing was, in my youth, something I avoided with every trick of deception I could muster.  But as I grew older, I realized that in my life's experiences I had acquired a voice, and something to say.  We were living in Somerset, Pennsylvania at the time, a place where winter generally begins in mid-October and doesn't relinquish it's grip until mid-May, with an average of 100 inches of snow hitting the ground in between.  That leaves a lot of long winter evenings in which to explore the inner reaches of the mind and soul.  I began to write in fits and starts, learning a lot about content and how to construct a sentence along the way.  And how to self-edit.  Eventually, I acquired enough confidence to submit some pieces to the local newspaper.  The first thing published was an entire page devoted to the beginning of motorcycle season.  I still have the aluminum print plate, although it's faded quite a bit.  

My foray into becoming a columnist began with a strict ration of one piece per month.  Eventually that increased to once per week.  I remember with great joy and pride the day when the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat editor told me, "You were just too good to keep out of the paper."

A few months later, I began to submit to the other local paper in Somerset.  I was told that due to the close proximity of the two papers that I would have to write separate columns for each.  Now I had gone from writing one piece per month to writing two per week.  In addition, I picked up an occasional column in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and a few other smaller papers in the northeast.  I was having the time of my life. I was an honest-to-God newspaper columnist with a loyal following.  

But the only consistent thing in life is change. My day job, a small federal agency, was shut down, my co-workers scattered to the four winds.  I ended up in Virginia, after cutting my ties to the two Pennsylvania papers.  After all, I reasoned, how could I be a "local columnist" from 200 miles away?  I had, by this time also acquired a bit of an ego with regards to my writing and blithely assumed that I could pick up another columnist slot there.  Things however came crashing down to reality.  My submissions to the many local papers were completely ignored.  In a short period of time, I went from being a columnist to just another free lancer with a dream.

Hiking, Part 8

Copyright © 2014 by Ralph F. Couey

Words and pictures

Watching the weather forecasts approaching my hiking day gave me some cause for concern.  After a couple of weeks of delightful October-in-July, summer came back.  It was going to sunny and H3 (Hot, Humid, and Hazy) with temps reaching into the low 90's.  I normally don't do well in this kind of weather, but I sucked it up and went ahead.

Today's target was a stretch of the AT (Appalachian Trail) from US 50 southward into two really interesting areas, Sky Meadows State Park and the and the G.R. Thompson Wildlife Management Area.  The designated place to park when tackling this stretch is a parking area which can be accessed via a kinda scary driveway off Blue Ridge Mountain Road.  I touched on this in an earlier post, remarking that the driveway drops off so suddenly that when you first pull off the road, you literally can't see where you're going.  Pulling back out is an adventure because you can't see the traffic coming south until your front end is well out onto the roadway.  Looking for an alternative, I spied, via Google Maps, Liberty Hill Lane, a gravel road that leads off into the woods.  There appeared to be room for one or two cars to park there, and it was in close proximity to where the trail picks up on the south side of the highway.  Arriving there, I found a sufficient space to park my vehicle (in the shade, no less) and was pleased to discover and access path leading to the AT.  I geared up and headed south.