The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere

One of my favorite poets / songwriters was a man named Utah Phillips. After surviving the Korean War, he came back to the USA and spent years traveling the county by rail, writing songs and poems about his memories and experiences along the way. He eventually became, in his own terms, an ‘anarchist pacifist’, and an eloquent voice for peace, equal rights and social justice. When asked by a companion about why he spent so much time singing about the past, ‘when you can’t live in the past, you know’ … he answered, ‘I can go outside and pick up a rock, as old as the oldest song you know, and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot … now the past didn’t go anywhere, did it. It’s right here, right now.’

While Angela and I wandered through the peaceful, beautiful forests of Luxembourg, along the paths of Müllerthal Trail, it was impossible to ignore the past that seemed to echo in every rock and tree in the forest.

About a century before winding our way through these forests and steams, soldiers from the USA and Germany fought and died along these same paths in a desperate effort to turn the tides of World War II. The fight became known as the Battle of the Bulge, and lasted for over a month spanning both Christmas and the New Year in 1944 and 1945.

The number of human casualties was absolutely horrendous. Between 60,000 and 100,000 Germans were killed, wounded, missing in action or captured. Around 90,000 American troops became casualties, 19,000 of which died. The Battle of the Bulge is the second deadliest campaign in US history, with more lives being lost than in the invasion of Normandy.

Seeing what humanity is capable of achieving, when given the freedom to create, has been truly inspiring to behold. Wondering through the halls of The Alhambra and The Alcázar of Seville … strolling through the gardens at Giverny and The Generalife … standing under the vaulted ceilings and stained glass of La Sagrada Familia and the Basilica of Montserrat … staring at the works of Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet … all of these have given us such a feeling of awe at the creativity of our species.

But to be in such a beautiful, peaceful and seemingly untouched environment, knowing the horrors which occurred here in the past were due to the destructive powers of the same species … ? It gives us such a different, albeit a highly confused, perspective of our present and future responsibilities as individuals in our current society …

In the end, I’ll call upon Utah Phillips to put words to my thoughts and feelings, ‘… it was at that point that I knew things had to change, and that change had to begin with me.’