Re: Down In The Ground Where The Dead Men Go Song Free Download
Matt Dreher
Visitors walk through the Flight 93 National Memorial in southwestern Pennsylvania. The memorial is dedicated to the people who died on United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001. Tim Lambert hide caption
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I picked it up and stared for a minute or so. Maybe a foot in length, it had weight to it. I felt my throat tighten and my heart speed up. I thought I might break down. I had to slow my breathing to collect myself.
The wooded area I was trudging through belongs to the National Park Service. It is part of the Flight 93 National Memorial, which opened a decade ago. It can only be visited by family members of the 40 passengers and crew of the doomed flight. They can also bring guests with them.
But for nearly 70 years, 163 acres of this land belonged to my family. My grandfather bought it in the 1930s, then passed it to my dad, who passed it to me. As a child, I spent summer days in these woods, picking blackberries and fishing. Sometimes I'd check out the log cabins on the land, cabins my grandfather had built by hand.
In the weeks after 9/11, Americans struggled to get their heads around the horror of that day. There were so many terrible images playing on a loop. The plane hitting the second tower. The "missing" posters plastered over Lower Manhattan. The collapsed side of the Pentagon.
I saw the crash site up close for the first time just three weeks after United Flight 93 went down. I'd come at the invitation of the county coroner, Wally Miller. He was going to let me see a space that had been hidden from public view since the day of the attacks. When I stepped from my car into the chilly fall air, it hit me.
I was back in Shanksville five years later at the request of Debby Borza. Her 20-year-old daughter, Deora Bodley, was the youngest passenger on Flight 93. The first years after the crash, I'd made many trips back and forth to my land. I went as a journalist to chronicle a story to which I had a front-row seat. But I also went to help. So I spent hours combing through the woods with Wally and others, picking up plane parts, noting which trees had been searched, indicated by big red Xs. I grew close to some families, close enough that during one visit, Debby threw me a birthday party at a restaurant a few miles from Shanksville.
I walked through the security gate set up to keep trespassers out and was greeted by Debby. Ben Wainio and his wife, Esther Heymann, were with her. Like Debby, they had also lost their daughter, Honor Elizabeth Wainio, on Flight 93.
The crash site, once so brown, barren and charred, was now a vibrant green. The grass was back, tall and lush, and so were the wildflowers. The surviving hemlocks stood tall, although they still bore scars from that day, missing branches from base to canopy.
As we stood together that morning, steps from where the plane had hurtled into the ground five years earlier, we talked about the land and the connection families now felt to it. Ben told me he felt like he's here with Elizabeth. Esther said she found it poignant that something so sad and tragic could happen in this random, peaceful landscape. She found it cathartic to bring a lawn chair to sit for hours in solitude and peace.
I no longer had a right to be here, and I no longer felt like a caretaker of this place. I was here as a guest. Ken Nacke, a Baltimore County police officer, was here to visit his brother, and he asked me to join him. Louis "Joey" Nacke was a passenger on United 93.
As we stood near a 17-ton sandstone boulder placed at the point of impact, Ken told me about his brother. He was 42 years old, a weightlifter with a Superman tattoo on his arm. Ken gestured around us. Here, he told me, was the place he'd been able to finally subdue his grief. One day, he said, he'd been sitting on a bench, soaking in the wildlife and beautiful surroundings. The smells. The peacefulness.
A pair of bear cubs wandered out of the woods. Maybe 200 yards away. Stopping short of the impact site, they started roughhousing. Wrestling. Rolling around. Swiping at each other. Chasing each other.
A field once scarred by a smoldering crater, but now a living tribute to the 40 passengers and crew who likely saved the U.S. Capitol and hundreds of lives through their attempts to retake the cockpit.
Each spring I anxiously look for a number of milestones. For me, each highlights a happening that makes spring such a special time of the year. My list includes spotting and listening to the first flock of greater sandhill cranes winging their way toward their breeding grounds far to the north; redbud trees bursting into pink clouds of delicate flowers; and, the arrival of the first hummingbird.
While these and a host of other events are important to me, none is more special than hearing that first call of the whip-poor-will. This year, that occurred well before the rays of the rising sun began dissolving the darkness of night on March 28.
Ever since I was a boy, I have been fascinated with this true will-o'-the wisp. Back then, I thought I was one of the few folks who were enamored with the bird. However, as I became older and wiser, I learned that humankind has long been intrigued by a bird that is far more often heard than seen. I am certain that our interest even began long before Aristotle popularized the myth that under the cloak of darkness members of the nightjar family (which includes the whip-poor-will) would suck milk from goats. This myth was so widespread that, to this day, nightjars are often referred to as goatsuckers.
Down through the generations a number of famous authors and poets such as Henry David Thoreau, Washington Irving, James Thurber, Stephen Vincent Benet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Frost and William Faulkner have written about this mysterious bird. Even the legendary country singer and songwriter Hank Williams wrote about the whip-poor-will. Everyone that loves country music is familiar with Hank Williams' famous lyrics, "Hear the lonesome whip-poor-will. He sounds too blue to fly. The midnight train whining low. I'm so lonesome I could cry."
Not to argue with Hank Williams, but I have always considered the whip-poor-will's call to be uplifting. Perhaps I am in the minority. Who knows? One thing I do know is that according to American folklore, if you hear a whip-poor-will singing near your home, it is a sign of an impending death. Others believed it was an omen that bad luck would befall you in the near future.
Now we know the male whip-poor-will calls to advertise the boundaries of his breeding territory and to attract a mate. This pronouncement is most often heard shortly after sunset and just before dawn. However, my wife and I have also heard the birds call in the dead of night.
Whip-poor-wills are known for the incessant calling. While, for some unknown reason, whip-poor-wills will call for only a few minutes, more often than not they will call and call without any letup. Often they will repeat the name 400 or more times before going silent. However, one observer reported a whip-poor-will calling 1,088 times before calling it quits.
During the brief time they are with us, whip-poor-wills are most often found in deciduous and mixed forests features little undergrowth. They have also been found in pine and pine-oaks woodlands. Another key component to the whip-poor-will's habitat is the proximity to open fields.
Whip-poor-wills do not build a nest. Typically, females will lay their two-egg clutches directly on dead leaves; however, sometimes their eggs are found on bare ground. It has been reported that nests are often on the north side of a nearby herb or bush. Whip-poor-wills will nest up to twice a year.
It seems whip-poor-wills begin feeding about a half an hour after the sun sets. They will continue hunting until it becomes next to impossible for them to see. They resume foraging for food some 40 minutes before dawn. When you consider most other birds have the luxury of feeding their young throughout the day, I am sure that whip-poor-wills are often challenged to feed their young during the brief period available to them.
As it turns out, many biologists believe whip-poor-wills greatly extend their time to gather food for their young by actively feeding when the moon is full. This theory has been bolstered by research that suggests the eyes of the whip-poor-will are equipped with a reflective structure that greatly enhances the birds' ability to see the silhouettes of insects by moonlight.
Whip-poor-wills feed on the wing. Moths and beetles are among their favorite prey. However, they also eat fireflies and other flying insects. They catch these large insects in their extremely large mouth. These aerial hunters often hunt patrolling the edges of fields and woodlands.
Those of us who live in the northern half of the state are most likely to hear the song of the whip-poor-will. However, the Georgia Breeding Bird survey revealed that the bird nests sporadically below the Fall Line. Although the whip-poor-will appears to have been extending its breeding range southward over the past several decades, experts suggest that most of the whip-poor-wills heard in this portion of the state are either late migrants or nonbreeding males.
Data collected in the annual Breeding Bird Survey has not shown a population trend for the birds in Georgia. Data collected throughout the birds breeding range paints a far different picture. According to these findings, the population of whip-poor-wills plummeted 60 percent between 1970 and 2014.
I, for one, do not want to see us lose the whip-poor-will. Although I measure the time between my seeing one by the year, it remains one of my favorite birds. I am sure this is due, in large part to the fact that as a boy, I often heard the emphatic calling of the whip-poor-while while I was camping out in the backyard or fishing for catfish from a wooden boat anchored in the channel of a slow-moving river not far from my home.
Over the years, my appreciation for the bird has grown, helping me better understand what Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The note of the whip-poor-will borne over the fields is the voice with which the moon and moonlight woo me."
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