Alum, Ice, Trees and War

My middle son and I spent Friday morning tramping around Alum Spring Park, 34 acres of trees and rocks adjoining the Fredericksburg Battlefield. I associate alum with a mouth-puckering gag in a Little Rascals episode, but in the 18th and 19th centuries it was used to preserve meat and tan hides. A web site maintained by the Central Rappahannock Regional Library offers this lesson in applied chemistry:

"Alum is any of a group of hydrated double salts, usually consisting of aluminum sulfate, water of hydration, and the sulfate of another metal. Today the various alums have many uses including the production of medicines, textiles, sugar, paper, paints, matches, deodorants, baking powder, and for water purification and waterproofing paper. The styptic pencil, a short medicated stick applied to a cut to stop bleeding, is often made of alum."

George Washington surveyed Alum Spring, part of a creek still known at Hazel Run, for a friend. The first grist mills were built in the 18th century. British and Hessian troops captured at Camden, N. J., were held here and, the library site says, "Ice taken from the large Alum Spring millpond was a prized commodity." We passed a weed-covered hole in the woods -- the site of a 19th-century ice house. What a wonder ice must have seemed in the summer in the pre-refrigeration age. In "The Pond in Winter" chapter in Walden, Thoreau describes ice-harvesting and his pond's unique color:

"Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers."

We stood on Alum Spring Rock, a lump of sandstone 400 feet long and 40 feet high, where I instructed Michael, who turns six today, in the manly art of skipping stones across the surface of Hazel Run. Almost 144 years ago, the great rock was the site of a more fearful gathering:

"The sandstone cliff was a cold but welcome refuge for hundreds of women and children during the bombardment of Fredericksburg in December of 1862. In happier times, Confederate reunions were held under the shadows of the cliff in August of 1885 and September of 1886."

There's little overlap between the trees in Virginia and those growing in Houston. Oaks predominate back there, but you never see beeches, with their smooth, unblemished bark, ideal for carving initials and romantic sentiments. The battlefield and Alum Spring Park are dense with holly trees. Sweet gums grow in both places, but Houston has more mosquitoes. Throughout our hike we heard blue jays and an unidentified bird with a harsh, gull-like call.
Regardless of the beauty of this place, visited on a perfect sunny morning in June, it's impossible to forget what happened here. In Specimen Days, Whitman included a piece, "After First Fredericksburg," describing the scene in the weeks after the battle:

"December 23 to 31.—The results of the late battle are exhibited everywhere about here in thousands of cases, (hundreds die every day,) in the camp, brigade, and division hospitals. These are merely tents, and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blankets are spread on layers of pine or hemlock twigs, or small leaves. No cots; seldom even a mattress. It is pretty cold. The ground is frozen hard, and there is occasional snow. I go around from one case to another. I do not see that I do much good to these wounded and dying; but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him and sit near him for hours, if he wishes it.

"Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the camps, talking with the men, &c. Sometimes at night among the groups around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. These are curious shows, full of characters and groups. I soon get acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well used. Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best. As to rations, the army here at present seems to be tolerably well supplied, and the men have enough, such as it is, mainly salt pork and hard tack. Most of the regiments lodge in the flimsy little shelter-tents. A few have built themselves huts of logs and mud, with fire-places."

Whitman makes no mention of Christmas or the coming of the new year. The war raged for another 28 months.