Realization
2 July 2026 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_novel_heroTouring the battlefield at Gettysburg, my partner, in looking up at the rocks of Little Round Top from The Valley of Death said;
“I’m no military strategist but even I can see that is made of nope.”
I am reminded of an NPR interview from some years back covering restoration of the Lincoln funerary train. The interviewer related that many thousands of people turned out along the tracks to watch the train carrying Abraham Lincoln home after his assassination in 1865. She used the term realization.
The modern usage of this word is along the lines of learning something or knowing something you didn’t know before, but it’s 19th Century usage was having something made real in your mind. You can read about something or know about something but that is different from the experience of having it made real to you. It can be a difficult distinction, it is the same word after all, but it is distinctive.
Some years ago, years before this NPR article, I had won a vacation to California. Stayed near the beach in Santa Monica, visited a TV set, met cast and crew. On the last day, I was in Hollywood doing the tourist thing and decided I wanted to see the sun set over the ocean. Another tourist thing, I suppose. And, instead of heading back to the hotel, I headed north along the Pacific Coast Highway looking for a good spot.
I wasn’t finding one. The sun was getting lower and lower and I was not finding a place I could pull off to see the ocean.
Finally, round about Malibu, I found a pull off. There was a cliff across the road that looked down on a small beach where some guys were surfing. There was a rise that would offer a vantage to see the ocean but there was also a sign warning that this was an archaeological site. I read the sign carefully and it did not exclude people from the site, just advised not to disturb, change, or take anything.
On the rise there was a rock to sit on and I had gotten there just in time to see the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. Except that didn’t happen. There was an island in the way. I had rushed all this way to be foiled by the silhouette of an island, blocking my view.
I was disappointed. I looked around this rock and saw stone chips. The vantage. The archaeological sign.
For hundreds or maybe thousands of years, people came to this place to fashion stone tools. They could have made those tools where they found the flint or they could have made them back at their homes. Instead, they carried them here because, just at sunset, they could pause from their work, look up, and out near the horizon they would see something that the haze of distance and daylight kept from them otherwise. A magic island.
Realization.
I made real a moment, a connection, a deep understanding beyond what I could ever know from a book, a photograph, or even the knowledge that such a place existed. That moment was so powerful, so meaningful, so singular, that I cried. I’m crying a bit now. It was that real. Years later it remains that real.
And I think about the experience of those people lining the tracks to watch a train go by. Of my partner looking up a hill south of Gettysburg. Of my sitting on a rock on the Pacific coast. Of places where important things happened. Of places where mundane things happened. Of places where people lived. And died. Of moments made real and how important it is to protect and nurture those places. Battlefields. Museums. Zoos. Trails.
Spaces that can touch us and make us human. Make us all real.
“I’m no military strategist but even I can see that is made of nope.”
I am reminded of an NPR interview from some years back covering restoration of the Lincoln funerary train. The interviewer related that many thousands of people turned out along the tracks to watch the train carrying Abraham Lincoln home after his assassination in 1865. She used the term realization.
The modern usage of this word is along the lines of learning something or knowing something you didn’t know before, but it’s 19th Century usage was having something made real in your mind. You can read about something or know about something but that is different from the experience of having it made real to you. It can be a difficult distinction, it is the same word after all, but it is distinctive.
Some years ago, years before this NPR article, I had won a vacation to California. Stayed near the beach in Santa Monica, visited a TV set, met cast and crew. On the last day, I was in Hollywood doing the tourist thing and decided I wanted to see the sun set over the ocean. Another tourist thing, I suppose. And, instead of heading back to the hotel, I headed north along the Pacific Coast Highway looking for a good spot.
I wasn’t finding one. The sun was getting lower and lower and I was not finding a place I could pull off to see the ocean.
Finally, round about Malibu, I found a pull off. There was a cliff across the road that looked down on a small beach where some guys were surfing. There was a rise that would offer a vantage to see the ocean but there was also a sign warning that this was an archaeological site. I read the sign carefully and it did not exclude people from the site, just advised not to disturb, change, or take anything.
On the rise there was a rock to sit on and I had gotten there just in time to see the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. Except that didn’t happen. There was an island in the way. I had rushed all this way to be foiled by the silhouette of an island, blocking my view.
I was disappointed. I looked around this rock and saw stone chips. The vantage. The archaeological sign.
For hundreds or maybe thousands of years, people came to this place to fashion stone tools. They could have made those tools where they found the flint or they could have made them back at their homes. Instead, they carried them here because, just at sunset, they could pause from their work, look up, and out near the horizon they would see something that the haze of distance and daylight kept from them otherwise. A magic island.
Realization.
I made real a moment, a connection, a deep understanding beyond what I could ever know from a book, a photograph, or even the knowledge that such a place existed. That moment was so powerful, so meaningful, so singular, that I cried. I’m crying a bit now. It was that real. Years later it remains that real.
And I think about the experience of those people lining the tracks to watch a train go by. Of my partner looking up a hill south of Gettysburg. Of my sitting on a rock on the Pacific coast. Of places where important things happened. Of places where mundane things happened. Of places where people lived. And died. Of moments made real and how important it is to protect and nurture those places. Battlefields. Museums. Zoos. Trails.
Spaces that can touch us and make us human. Make us all real.
