I've never understood the whole "battlefield" thing. For that matter, I've never understood the whole "re-enacter" thing, either. I'm not saying we ought to simply plant Wal-Mart after Wal-Mart on top of old battlefields, but I'm not entirely sure why we need to "preserve" them, either.

I was up at Gettysburg yesterday. My older son Max has taken an interest in all things war (he hates wars, but he's utterly fascinated by them as well), and my younger son Sam likes to talk about anything that is dead. So it seemed like a good idea.

Gettysburg is about an hour-and-a-half north of the Beltway (give or take a bit, depending on traffic). The drive is gorgeous. Once you clear Frederick, Maryland, and head up into the Appalachian foothills, there are plenty of trees, streams, farms, etc. In fact, you drive right by Camp David on the way up, and Camp David is nestled in some seriously pretty minor mountains.

Gettysburg is a few miles east of the foothills proper, but its rolling hills are still quite pretty. In fact, the only things detracting from the view are all the massive monuments that seem to have been sown by some demented marble farmer.

This is what I don't get: The gaudy excess of the remembrance. All the monuments (and they come along every few feet along many of the streets in and just out of town) take away from the obvious significance of the battlefields. Indeed, the small plain where Pickett's Charge took place speaks volumes all by itself. Never mind that there are a lot more trees today than there were in 1863 (almost all of the mature trees had been felled for a variety of uses, including housing, farming and industry). That's not important. It's not hard to envision 12,000 or so soldiers hauling themselves across fences and into the fields in a suicidal attempt to gain a foothold in the opposing heights. Well, it's a little hard, what with the monstrous memorials dotting the landscape, but most folks have enough imagination to blot those out for a moment. There is something to holding the land clear, even if it isn't (and could never be) "preserved."

Still, I don't know why so many people wander to so many battlefields. I hate to use a word as loaded as "obsessive," but the fixation on events of 150 years ago (or almost, anyway) seem a bit excessive.

I know, I know, that's what historians do. But see, historians are obsessive about their subjects. My dad is a professional historian. He's a history professor and he writes books. When he's researching a subject, he's utterly obsessive. That's cool. That's his job.

I'm modestly obsessed with beer. Beer (making, collecting and drinking) is a hobby of mine. On the other hand, I've never visited a brewery unless I was buying beer, and I don't think I've ever taken a brewery tour. I haven't kept a written drinking diary, though I could rattle off a thousand or two brews in my "repertoire" if you asked me.

But my idea of a hobby just isn't up to snuff with the re-enacters. These folks dress up in uncomfortable clothes, sleep in uncomfortable quarters and (if they're feeling really authentic) eat almost inedible food. All for the chance to stand up, fire a blank from some sort of musket or rifle and then fall down.

I've got a few friends who go to re-enactments from time to time, and they're not any crazier than I am. But I don't understand their level of devotion to this hobby. At any Civil War re-enactment, there are always many more rebels than union soldiers. This, of course, makes the re-enactment necessarily false, as the Confederate Army was undermanned in nearly every battle. But that doesn't really matter. I've been told that here's a certain romance to being a southern soldier. After all most Confederate soldiers didn't own slaves. And despite what certain folks would like to believe, most soldiers knew exactly what they were fighting for. The "states rights" at issue pretty much boiled down to one: the right to own slaves. I'm not sure how much that ought to be celebrated.

A few of the Tea Party types, already sympathetic to certain views held in the antebellum south, have latched on to the "romance" of the southern soldier in the Civil War. More than one has made secessionist noise. I suppose once you've started appropriating the garb of historical figures, you might as well collect as many as you can.

The last stop on the Gettysburg tour (we did the self-guided "auto tour," which has the great advantage of being free) is the cemetery. The park ranger (Gettysburg is a national military park, which is the same thing as a national park, and so it has park rangers and the like) giving a tour spent much of his time discussing Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and the monument to the soldiers which stands in the cemetery.

Then he closed with a plain-spoken, but eloquent, discourse on the greatness of America. His final words reminded the crowd that no matter what troubles we may have now, the citizens of our country have faced much worse--and the union has still survived. He said that the same is true of our nation as it faces today's relatively petty problems.

I think he's right. And maybe I was wrong about battlefields. Maybe battlefields put things in a perspective that's hard to appreciate when you're kicking back on the deck with a burger and a beer. Maybe we ought to think about the sacrifices of others--military and non-military alike--that shaped the country where we live our lives. That might be a damned good idea.

I'd still lose the monuments in a heartbeat. Lincoln said, "We cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far about our poor power to add or detract."

The nice thing about Lincoln's best work is that it leaves nothing else to say.

After spending the day in Gettysburg, Jon Worley enjoyed a fine dinner and some good brews with his family at KcLinger's in Hanover, Pa.