I have matured greatly over the years. The area that I feel I have matured the most is empathy. As a kid I never really cared about how others felt. I didn’t wish anyone ill will, but I wasn’t able to internalize how others felt. Looking back, one of the most inappropriate times this happened was in forth grade.
September 11th, 2001. It was early in the morning and I was busy in class at Norvelt Elementary school. Some students were being dismissed early, unexpectedly. All the adults looked extremely stressed. After lunch we were all sent home. As Abby and I came bounding in the den both Mom and Dad were home (which was weird for the early afternoon), eyes glued on the TV. The news kept saying something about ‘towers’ and ‘planes,’ but I wasn’t paying too much attention. The footage of the planes hitting and the towers collapsing kept playing over and over.
“What happened?” I asked.
“There are planes that crashed into the World Trade Centers in New York. One even hit the Pentagon. While over at work today I saw a plane flying too low, crashing on the other side of the ridge near Somerset.” Dad replied.
And then I left the room. Not because I was scared, or couldn’t handle it. But Dad told me what happened, and I was going to play on my Gameboy. I had no feelings about this event. I understood it was bad, but why would I feel anything for people in, where was it, New York? It took me years of education and growth to start to comprehend the tragedy of that day.
Flight 93 Memorial in the distance.
Last weekend I was driving alone along the familiar route from Cumberland, MD to Pittsburgh. Nearing Somerset, I realized that I had never actually been to the Flight 93 Memorial. “After all these years,” I thought, “I now have the empathy to fully take in this event properly.”
I am a firm believer that National Parks are America’s best idea. This memorial only solidifies that more for me. Each stone was placed with care to balance passively directing hundreds of visitors, informing about this tragic event, and honoring those heroes of Flight 93. While taking the two hours to explore the crash site and visitor center, I started to understand what happened. Not fully, but as much as I could. I let myself be open to whatever emotions swept over me.
Personally I don’t feel comfortable taking pictures of sacred ground and this memorial is no different. But there is a path from the visitor center to the crash site and wraps around this beautiful field, twisting between newly planted trees. This is the picture above. Far enough from both places, but still close enough to see from afar. This was the perfect reflective walk for me to fully look back on what I saw.
At the end of this walk was a plaque. Following Roman Mars’ rule of “always read the plaque,” I read what is shown below.
“Land scarred by decades of coal mining is being restored.” Wait…was this a strip mine?
All my contemplative emotions quickly turned into rage. Why did it take a national tragedy to fix this? How many other abandoned strip mines are out there, causing damage? “Micro mountaintop removal” is happening all over my region, my home.
“Rural Pennsylvania doesn’t fascinate the world, not generally. But cyclically, periodically, its innards are of interest. Bore it, strip it, set it on fire, a burnt offering to the collective need.”
The Department of the Interior made a great video showcasing the work to fix the damage done by strip mining to the site. Collectively we need to treat our entire planet as what it is; sacred ground.