By Carole Hemingway

Dawn broke over a sultry morning this past June on the day I was to meet Abraham Lincoln.

We were in Harrisburg, Pa., a colonial city first settled in 1712 which became the Pennsylvania state capital a hundred years later.

I was in Harrisburg with Cooper Wingert, a dazzling Pennsylvania author of 10 Civil War books, and neither of us wanted to be late.  The character actor who played Lincoln, with his prose and articulation, painted verbal landscapes of the daily life back during the Civil War.

As I listened, I wanted nothing more than to just sit back and inhale it all in.  The next day, Larry Acker, a weatherman friend, client, and direct descendant of the farmers who owned the land where the Civil War’s Battle of Antietam was fought, joined us.

When Old Abe finished, I wanted to rush to Gettysburg; the home of the grassy hills where I deeply experience solemnity, and the sites of the Triangular Field, an unmarked corner of Gettysburg reputedly so haunted Park Rangers and Tourist Guides refuse to take visitors there. Of course that’s where we went first.

As we strolled the Triangular Field at Gettysburg, we seemingly stepped back in time and heard actual cannon fire.  It must be reenactors, we thought, but it wasn’t. You see, Gettysburg is a highly-controlled national park and when we later checked, we learned that no fireworks or reenactors had been permitted that day.

None of us wanted to leave these sacred and humbling grounds, but a birthday party awaited me at the historical Dobbin House, and we were late.

Birthdays; they are mile-markers in advance, parties when they happen, and Historical retrospect to who we were ‘last year’ and want to be ‘now that we are older’ when they are over.  Former Gettysburg Mayor Bill Troxell and his wife, Honey, were there, as was former Harrisburg Mayor Steve Reed.

Civil War author, Cooper Wingert and Larry Acker were in attendance, as were my very good friends Sharon and Craig Caba.  Craig is a historian of national renown and licensed appraiser with Antiques Road Show connections.  A surprise guest was International Patriarch Sir Patrick Atkinson of the Atkinson Center and North Dakota’s God’s Child Project.

For the next three hours, history once again became the contemporary as everyone engaged easy conversation about our collectively common interests in antiques, books, and the weavings of our cultural fibers.

This was such a special night but throughout it all I also hid a not-too-quiet painful secret.

Twenty-five years ago I had a near-death car crash in Santa Barbara, Calif. which has since given me constant back pain. During my birthday party at this historical Gettysburg Inn where runaway slaves once hid in secret chambers, I was surrounded by some of the nation’s brightest minds, yet the pain in my back was intolerable and preventing me from enjoying these people I loved.

After my birthday party, I went to Philadelphia, where I underwent back surgery.  I am still in pain, a quiet agony that rages within, hindering my ability to do what I love most…travel, write and be with my friends.  But I am not resigned, I am determined to find the solution, and get back my quality of life.

Maybe it’s time I leave my coastal home of Maine and make my way down to Gettysburg.  The history, the powerful strength of Abraham Lincoln’s leadership, my other-world experiences on the battlefield, and my loving friends there. Together these work wonders for me.

Happiness requires that we mix the old and the new, the known and unexpected.  We search for our place in the world and strive to keep pace as it turns.  Yes, maybe it is time for this change.

I am confident I will write and publish at least a dozen books, and maybe a screenplay or two, over the next 20 years. As for love, I’m like silverware rattling in a drawer when it’s abruptly opened.  I am ready to receive and give love again.

I was born on a dairy farm in Bear Creek, Pa., which is about 152 miles from Gettysburg and since birth have been on a very long journey.

Now, I think, I am heading home.

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Carole Hemingway

Carole Hemingway is an internationally regarded author, speaker, and historical researcher. She currently livesalong the coast of Maine where she is writing a book about Gettysburg, and waiting to publish another book about her father, Ernest.