Date of Visit: 30 June 2023
Prairie Grove, AR
90º with partly cloudy skies and yet another excessive heat warning
When I set out on my 52 Arkansas State Parks : 52 Poems project, I confess that interacting with the natural landscape consumed most of my imagination. I knew, of course, that museums and battlegrounds made up several parks, but they weren’t forefront in my mind. Driving into Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park, I saw first the Hindman Hall Museum (which also serves as the Visitor Center) and then, the sprawl of the battlefield on the ridge with historic buildings scattered about. After several days of hiking in the Ozark Mountains, the asphalt walking trail provided a great way to end my three days of visits in northwest Arkansas, especially given the heat. While the park serves first and foremost as an historical landmark with educating visitors about the battle that played out on December 7, 1862, given the most attention, I fell a bit in love with all of the old and well-tended trees on the ridge.
As I walked the trail and read placard after placard about the battle between Confederate General T.C. Hindman (Arkansas) and Union Generals James G Blunt (Kansas) and F.J. Herron (Iowa), I became overwhelmed thinking about the conflict that divided us then and how continued and rising conflicts seem to be tearing the country asunder once more. Periodically, I turned to the trees and I kept returning to the question of how old the trees on the trail might be. Could any of them have been around during the battle? Later in the day, attending an interactive lecture on the park’s historic buildings, I learned that there is a volunteer arborist who visits regularly and who believes several of the trees may be “witness trees,” trees that today might date as old as 200 years.
Whenever I write about the flora and fauna around me, I resist the urge to personify or to ask the natural world to help me hide from the reality with which I might struggle (i.e. climate disaster, divisive human conflict, misogyny & all the -isms, &etc.) I want to be a steward of my environment at the local and global levels, and one of my lifelong questions in this mission is this: What do I ask of my environment and what does my environment ask of me? And now you see how quickly these poem drafts morph into huge ideas even as I grapple with the overpowering amount of information I gather at each site.
All of that being said, about three-fourths of the way through the battlefield trail, I encountered this set of twined trees. A black walnut and a hackberry, to me, these were the most fascinating natural encounter I had during my visit, and let me tell you, I wanted so very much to see these as some sign of hope about two very different “sides” of any conflict eventually growing to understand each other.
Between my time on the trail, reading and listening to the exhibits in the museum, and attending the interactive park interpreter session, I came away from the park mulling over the language of war. Here are a few of the headers from exhibits: “Six Mortal Hours,” “The Slaughter Pen,” “Commence the Music” (where “music” refers to the Union artillery, “Our batteries opened on them, and then commenced the music.”), and “Blazing Away Like Fury.” Many of these phrases come from letters written by commanders, soldiers, or local residents who observed the battle from nearby locations. Of course, being born and raised in Iowa, I had to stop and text my family a picture of one sign that read, “With drive and determination the Iowans erupted onto the battlefield once again.”
I thought a lot about my relationship with the Civil War and the North and the South as I walked the ground that contained artifacts, shrapnel & bone, from 160+ years ago. Growing up, my education assured me that I walked on the “right side of history.” In fact, the only documented connection I have to the Civil War is that James Longhorn came from England to the US in around 1860 and joined the Nineteenth Illinois Regiment, eventually being promoted to 1st Lieutenant. Not sure how many greats I am from this ancestor or whether I’m a direct descendant or a niece, I do know he’s there in my genetic memory. When I moved to Arkansas in 1999, I began to gain friends who grew up with strong southern identities, and I would gently kid these friends, “well, we know who won the war don’t we.” Now, 24 years later, as I identify as an Arkansan, I find myself wrestling with what this means in terms of confronting our history here and being “on the wrong side.” The current political climate in Arkansas (and in Iowa for that matter) mean that I face living in a place (places if I still count Iowa as one of my homes) that seems determined to move backward and into more divisive times.
This image of the flat river plain that served as the approach for the Iowans in the Union troops on December 7, 1962 haunts me. It was the Illinois River they forded in their approach of the ridge directly behind me as I photographed the scene. I stood there, on a relatively quiet morning, shaded by lovely, old trees and felt compassion for the people on all sides of the battle, the Confederate & Union soldiers and their support staff, as well as the local people, especially those who were driven from their homes that day, homes that the Union armies would burn to the ground the next day. Aside that atrocity, the Union leadership also commanded that all captured Confederate horses be shot and killed, despite their own troops begging them to “save the horses!” All of this is to say that to claim one is on the “right” or “wrong” side of history is a complex and troubling paradigm, and I expect this will simmer up in the poem as well.
This poem may end up being the most somber of the collection. Time will tell.
Next up: Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area
