I love cool sunny Fall days. I feel fortunate to live only 25 minutes from Valley Forge National Park. It’s a truly special place. We’ve been taking our kids there for the last fifteen years. They have participated in the Park Ranger program where they pretended to be Continental Army soldiers, complete with muskets and ranks. I wanted to take a hike around the park before the Fall foliage disappeared with the arrival of bitter Winter winds. As we began our five mile trek around the park, the sun was shining brightly, the sky was a magnificent shade off blue, and the winds were gusting at 30 mph.
There is so much history at Valley Forge. You can’t walk around this park and not feel the ghosts of courageous men who sacrificed everything to fight tyranny. The bravery and leadership exhibited by General Washington and his men at Valley Forge during the Winter of 1777-1778 is the stuff of legend. No need to exaggerate what they did. Their fortitude and sacrifice led to the creation of our country.
The park represents the essence of freedom to me. There is no traces of consumerism. We didn’t see a government employee during our 2 hour stay. This national park has seen its budget cut, and it doesn’t matter. Walking paths, trees, grass and monuments don’t require government drones policing, corralling, or harassing citizens exercising their freedom to enjoy nature, history and the right to assembly. The log cabins dotting the landscape are reminders of the hardships our ancestors endured to win our freedom. The cannons are a reminder that men had to die to gain our freedom from tyrants.
The soldiers at Valley Forge earned the right to be called heroes. The revisionist liberal historians who scorn George Washington, the other founding fathers, and the farmers who defeated the British Army probably despise the openness of Valley Forge Park where citizens are free to roam, explore and congregate without being patted down, molested, or made to walk through x-ray machines. You are even free to sit on a cannon.
As I took pictures of this magnificent park on a magnificent day, the camera phone captured a stunning reflection that visualized my feeling of standing on hallowed ground.
Shortly thereafter we came upon the statue of a man who was crucial to the formation of our country, and he wasn’t even from our land. Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben – Baron von Steuben to you – was primarily responsible for turning the ragtag band of farmer soldiers into an army at Valley Forge. He was Prussian born and volunteered without pay to serve under General Washington.
Steuben’s training technique was to create a “model company”; a group of 120 chosen men who in turn successively trained other personnel at Regimental and Brigade levels. Steuben’s eccentric personality greatly enhanced his mystique. In full military dress uniform, he trained the soldiers—who, at this point, were themselves greatly lacking in proper clothing—swearing and yelling at them up and down in German and French. When that was no longer successful, he recruited Captain Benjamin Walker, his French-speaking aide, to curse at them for him in English.
It was hard tough men like Baron von Steuben who did whatever it took to gain our freedom. In the degraded decaying society we inhabit today, I would venture to guess that less than 10% of Americans could tell you who Baron von Steuben was and what he meant to the founding of our Republic.
I was somewhat shocked by how few people were hiking in the park on this beautiful day. With millions of people within 45 minutes of a national treasure, you would think there would be more than a few hundred people enjoying its beauty and historical significance. I’m sure there were more people in the Valley Forge Casino, a couple miles away. That should tell you all you need to know about the priorities of an empire in decline. I did notice how some young people were walking next to each other with their iGadget earphones drowning out the sounds of nature. They couldn’t hear the winds rustling the leaves or the sounds of silence and peace across the rolling hills. They weren’t talking to each other. They were lost in the solitude of a Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus pop song. Why ponder the history of this hallowed ground, when you could lose more brain cells listening to what passes for culture in our society of mindlessness, where nothing matters and no one cares.
As we came upon the Washington Cathedral we all noticed the brilliantly blue sky framing this place of worship. It seemed surreal. Then it struck me. I had only seen a sky this shade of blue once in my life. The morning of 9/11 was equally crisp, with an almost surreal brilliantly blue clear sky. I quickly turned my mind away from that dreadful day and back to the glorious setting I was enjoying with my wife and son. We completed our trek and headed back to the car.
Sometimes it takes a day of peace and quiet amongst nature and historical monuments to focus you on what is important in life, what is worth fighting for, and how far we have drifted from the founding principles of this country. Benjamin Franklin told a lady they had given the people a Republic, if they could keep it. We have failed. This country doesn’t even pretend to be a Republic any longer. We are a corporate fascist welfare warfare surveillance state, disguised as a democracy. We have failed our youth. We have failed the ghosts of George Washington, Baron von Steuben, and the courageous men of the Continental Army who sacrificed so much at Valley Forge.
“A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?” ― George Washington
