Valley of Death

"VALLEY OF DEATH"

On our way home from Tennessee recently we took a side trip off our "beaten path", so to speak,

and drove due north on US 52 from Rurual Retreat to the top of the range of mountains which were engulfed in a sea of multi-faceted fall colors. Every turn of the upward winding highway seemed to outdo the last vista and enthralled us with its beauty. Upon approaching the height of the top of the mountain, near where the road intersects with US 42, we observed a fire tower and as we drew closer we found a store at the base of the tower. There was an adjoining overlook which afforded a view over the whole valley below from which we had just ascended.

"Valley of Death," the historical marker proclaimed! How ironic, I thought, for such a beautiful place viewed from such a panoramic height. And if it were in the fall of the year, as when we were there, it is bound to have evoked at least a little dismay in the hearts of the Union soldiers who were sent here to destroy the salt mines and the railroad on which the southern armies, during the war between the states, so heavily relied. I suppose the lives of the eight men who were forfeited to the ravages of war in the ensuing battle was the reason this beautiful, and now serene, place has been designated "The Valley of Death," here in Wythe County, Virginia, all those many years ago.

From this distance in time, one gains a different perspective of a war which consisted of a people in a single nation between themselves. One can appreciate an evaluation of such a war as being anything but "civil." Ironically, there is no such thing as a "Civil War." And anyone who continues to harbor true and deep seated feelings of antipathy between a mass of people in one section of the same country against that of another mass of people of the same country, delineated by such terminology as "the North and the South," has their priorities crucially misplaced. It is one thing to joke about, but it is quite another to sincerely hold grudges over any number of years.