Memorial forest on Parkway

This place is a bit eerie. The sign says the United Daughters of the Confederacy planted 125,000 red spruce pines as a memorial to the men from North Carolina who died in that horrible war in the 1860s.

You almost hear the ghosts of grunts grumbling about ole man Lee, bad food, cold weather, falling apart boots, lack of bullets and pesky Yankees.

Listen closely, and the wind sounds like a mini ball whizzing through the branches.

I thought about great-granddad James Hubbard who, at the age of 16, enlisted his lanky frame in the Army of Northern Virginia and left the family farm in Charles City, Va.

He did return.

He also never owned a slave. Doubt that very many of that 125,000 who died, more than from any other state, owned human beings either.

It is a quiet place, mostly, just up the road from some of my favorite trout streams and just off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Brevard, N.C.