Start of a New Guiding Season

Well, we're approaching the two month mark since the 2014 guiding season opened for me at Gettysburg National Military Park.  As a part-time Licensed Battlefield Guide, I take the winter off to let the full-timers get the few visitors that come through that time of year.  During the spring, summer and fall I spend my evenings, weekends, or whenever I find time away from my 'real job,' on the battlefield.

I'm already well on my way to meeting my 90 tour minumum, and have met some really nice visitors.  Meeting people is probably my favorite part about being a guide.  I know that if someone is willing to spend $65 on a two-hour tour, they probably have an above average interest in the Civil War, or at least the desire to walk away from their experience with a bit more than what the Visitor Center can provide alone.  This almost always makes for thoughtful dialogue on the field.

Every year I've been guiding there seems to be a different trend in terms of who is visiting the park.  So far this spring I've had a lot more families with young kids than I had last year.  Geographically speaking, most of my tours so far have been folks from west of the Mississippi.  Last spring I remember having mostly New Englanders, and have no idea what may have caused the shift in demographics.  A like scenario is that it's all just dumb luck and coincidence, and I'm probably just reading too much into it.

My most unique tour so far was a gentlemen from Ohio.  I suspected right off the bat it was going to be a memorable tour when one of the ticket supervisors came back to the guide room and said 'I have a guy out here who says he's looking for a guide with no ego...any takers?'  None of the other guides seemed too eager to take it- not because they all have big egos (with some exceptions), but because any special request like that is usually the sign of an odd duck who you may not want to be stuck in the car with for two hours.

Joseph Kershaw

As it turns out, the gentlemen from Ohio was about as passionate about the history of the battle as anyone I've ever met.  He wanted to focus on Joseph Kershaw's South Carolina Brigade on July 2nd.  Specifically, he wanted wrap his head around how informed Kershaw was when in the mid-late afternoon of July he arrived in position a few hundred yards away from the Peach Orchard, where Dan Sickles' men of the Union III Corps had unexpectedly taken up an advanced position.  It quickly became apparent that he was just as, if not more informed than I was about that particular situation.  All of the accounts I could rattle off the top of my head he was already aware of, humbling me a great deal.

After orienting ourselves in that area of the battlefield, it seems he was looking for somebody to debate with on the various leadership decisions made that afternoon, and I was more than happy to be a contrarian to his views.  I wouldn't call those two hours a tour, more of a friendly debate that turned out to be a lot of fun.  Our conversation made me think about the events the afternoon of July 2nd in a new way, showing that I sometimes have just as much to learn from visitors as they do from me.