Historical Humility

What We’re Reading:

Evrest – Belinda (Pamela Allen)

Jovi – Pelle’s New Suit (Elsa Beskow)

Brittany – Insurgent (Veronica Roth)

Jeremy – Sex and the iWorld (Dale S. Kuehne)

What We’re Listening to:

Beautiful Things (Gungor)

A few minutes away from where we’re staying, is the oldest continuous European settlement on this continent, north of Florida (1710).  After grabbing a coffee from the Cozy Internet Café, you can cross the street to Fort Anne, which protected the town for much of its early existence.  What is most striking, and perhaps speaks best to the actual age of the fort is that rather than wooden palisades it has steep, grassy mounds for walls.  These hills are shaped in a star around the center of the fort (containing the officer barracks) and they are consecutively higher the further you go in.  Cannons are placed on the “walls” surrounding the fort, and monuments speak briefly of those first few hundred years of its existence.

Jovi and Ev enjoyed the hills at the fort and even attempted to roll down their steep, grassy sides.  This was easier for Jovi than Evrest who performed a more vertical-type “roll”, trying to imitate his sister without yielding his personal security.  They also enjoyed climbing on the various cannons, with Jovi always steering Ev to smaller, cute ones which she thought befit his size.  There are picnic tables to snack on and benches from which you can view the fork of the two rivers and the Annapolis Basin beyond.  It’s a beautiful site.  But like the tide and the vast ocean, even this place makes you feel small.

While watching Jovi and Ev roll down the hills; it’s hard to imagine grown men scrambling up those very same sides in any of the thirteen assaults which occurred against the fort.  Or while sitting on a bench, calmly looking out at the bay; it’s hard to imagine someone one in that very same spot, frantically searching the bay for any sign of reinforcements or relief from one of the many sieges the fort endured.  Even the very age of the town is difficult to comprehend, being over three hundred years old.  And certain homesteads which are on their tenth generation of being within the same family.

We live in a time which praises the present and glorifies the future; zealously pursuing technology and development as the answer to all our problems.  We are getting better and better and on all fronts.  And therefore, we are better than we were before.  Better than those who came before.  But it seems arrogant to think that way, gazing at the beautiful water while standing on a hill dug by a man three hundred years ago.  We do well to allow the Ancient of Days to draw us outside of our own little selves and our own little times.  To humble ourselves by remembering, and motivate ourselves by participating…in the very history we will soon be a part of.