Our Trip, Part 2

On Friday, the day of our trip, we made another mistake: We issued our students their gear in the morning at school. This should have been done the day before, after school so that things could have flowed more smoothly and the students could have had an opportunity to make the necessary sizing adjustments. We scheduled the bus for 8AM, but we did not roll out of the building until 8.35AM, which put a slight damper on the schedule. However, given weather constraints, this wasn't such a large issue.

Once we were moving, things proceeded well. We arrived at Fort Montgomery and were greeted by the outstanding staff, and the site director, Peter. They were ready to meet our needs in any way and were very accommodating in showing us the History Channel film about the Fort as well as the trailer for the new Visitors Center film that is due to be released any day now....

The films were instrumental in giving our students a better understanding of what it was they were about to embark upon. They had a much better sense after seeing the films what the significance of the fort and the Hudson Highlands was all about. In addition, they got to see my colleague, Ed, dressed as a Loyalist in one of the films and had the opportunity to give him some good-natured razzing.

As we left Fort Montgomery on the bus and headed south to the trail head on Route 9W, the heavens opened. Given how the weather had already impacted the trip, I was not surprised. Quite the opposite actually. I was silently hoping for rain as it would add to the experience. I certainly wanted none of my students to get hurt or sick, but I thought if they got a little wet as well as tired, then so much the better for living the life of a soldier. When we got off of the bus, no one seemed to mind the rain. Perhaps they were think the same way as I?

We started out hike on the west side of Route 9W at the 1777 Trail Head. (I had made this hike the day after Thanksgiving last year to gauge the level of difficulty. I wanted to make sure ahead of time that the students would be able to do this and to prepare them for what lay ahead.) The trail starts out with a little (very little) grade and then flattens out for a bit. Once we ran into the first steep incline, we marched a little bit more and then we stopped them for water. At this point we wanted to make sure everyone was still OK and then to give them a little insight into the trail and the march. A friend in the 5th NY Regiment, John Cronin, made use of this opportunity to tell the kids a bit about the trail and the style of marching and how hard a soldier's life would have been. Ed then jumped in with information specifically about the British and Loyalist experiences. We also discussed a bit about how the Rebels could have, had they enough manpower, put out pickets to harass the British as they advanced.

As we continued along the march, our students really got into the whole role of an 18th century soldier. Maybe it was the uniforms and the replica muskets, but the students really began to take hold of this idea and they became less 21st century and more 18th century. They certainly asked more questions than they had before which I think was a result of their actually being their and thinking about all of the "what if" scenarios. That alone was worth the trip.

That's it for now more to follow.

Thanks for readin'

Pete