Epilogue

The good thing about vacations is how nice it is to return home. My mom told me that more than once. Like the planning phase, contemplating the venture is as much fun as experiencing it.

Without benefit of a scale, both Heather and Michelle protested that they had gained weight on our expedition. We covered an average of 46 miles with four and a half hours of pedaling per day over five days. There was not one drop of rain, and we had no flat tires. We reached our expected destination each day. We saw tall trees along the trail, small towns, varied wildlife, tubers, fisherman, kayakers, walkers, joggers, fellow cyclists, canoeists, campers, lock houses, aqueducts, tunnels, bridges, trains, rafters, old people, and young people.

The C & O canal towpath works well for cyclists, but it does not seem like a bike trail. At a place called Falling Waters on the second day of our trip, we stopped to rest. Here the Confederate army waited before crossing the Potomac after Gettysburg. The image of a large army milling about was at odds with the shady peace of the current setting.

At Antietam the countryside is kept much the same way it was at the time of the Civil War – a corn field then is a corn field now. But my mind refused to replace the pleasantness of the current scene with the events of the day that stilled this place in time. That battle produced enough of a Union victory to allow Lincoln to issue the emancipation proclamation, and Gettysburg prompted perhaps the greatest political speech in history. There is no lack of significance here.

Yet this canal path was trodden for years by boys leading mules. It was these boys and their families that I sensed along the trail – people who lived their lives treading back and forth, upstream and downstream. There is something about anonymity that captures the imagination – as with the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The trail may seem monotonous after a while, but even so it is in a restorative way, like staring into the flames of a camp fire.

And there was something about retracing the steps of those boys.