history & hiking in manassas battlefield national park

I met my grandfather for the first time on Christmas Eve when I was 10 years old. He knocked on the door and stumbled awkwardly into our lives - my mom's, my brother, and mine, without an invitation. A woman younger than my mom was with him, and so you can imagine how my proud, independent mom felt about that. My mom held so much disdain for him that as hard as she tried to keep it away from my brother and me, we could see it on her face, but she still took him in.

He was a gruff man who smelled of Old Spice cologne. He had early stage dementia that turned into full-fledged Alzheimer's that eventually killed him. He rambled endlessly in the time he lived with us, telling us nonsensical stories of war and intrigue. After he died, my brother got curious about those old crazy stories filled with guns and danger and mischief and - did he mention a president's name? - and got to researching. My grandfather was an Italian man turned US war veteran. He moved his family from Indiana to Miami, and it was there that he became a mobster. Or at least the hired arm for one.

But long before I knew his secrets and before he died, my family made the difficult decision to put him in a home. We'd visit him every week and drive the same route every time, the minivan filled to the max with my brother, mom, and me, and my two cousins and their baby. And every trip, my mom would sail on through this one single stop sign, and the whole car load of us would yell, "STOP SIGN!" and my Mom would laugh uproariously and say, "That stop sign's not for me."

These days, seeing veterans' memorials and battlefields is one of the few times when my grandfather and his war stories comes to mind. So this weekend when Zan and I hiked around Manassas Battlefield National Park, I did think about him and his days as a veteran. I felt strange crunching over leaves covering a trail that was once coated in the blood of too many men during the battles of Bull Run, famously won by the Confederate Army during the Civil War. I stood on the site where "Stonewall" Jackson famously got his nickname, and I could've sworn there was a whiff of Old Spice in the air.

My mom never once got a ticket speeding through that stop sign. It really wasn't meant for her.

if you go...

Manassas Battlefield National Park

park in the visitor's center & take the 1-mile Henry Hill Loop

Difficulty: 1

History: 5 (Civil War)

Scenery: 4 (pastoral farmland and rolling hills in the distance)