A Season of Remembrance - Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Willams writes about a memorial to all the fallen in Iraq.

IN THE TOWN of Blue Hill on the coast of Maine, there is a field of small white flags, one flag placed for each soldier killed in the war in Iraq. Throughout the summer, I have walked past this piece of land located between the First Congregational Church and the public library and wondered who the land belongs to and who is responsible for keeping vigil, placing the flags, painting the rising numbers of dead in black on a white wooden sign: 1,873 American soldiers; 26,559 Iraqi civilians.
I discovered the land belongs to Rufus Wanning, an arborist, known throughout Hancock County as the tree specialist who helped Blue Hill save the American elms that stand in the community like elders....
My eyes turned to the field of white flags and the magnificent elms that shaded them. I saw Rufus Wanning with his head bowed and his large hands clasped behind his back. In his humble stance, I thought about how his impulse to save trees is the same impulse to offer his land as a place of peace. And how the third death, the spiritual death that accompanies the act of forgetting must be extended to the remembrance of beloved lands as well as loved ones....I heard the voice of Edward Abbey, another American who told the truth, "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul."

Let us all create memorials with the purpose of honoring all the fallen and stopping this war so no new memorial markers are needed.