SOUNDS OF FREEDOM

“The Sound of Freedom”.  That's what they call it over near Oak Harbor, home of the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island.  This area is also home to Deception Pass State Park, one of the most beautiful natural wonders of Washington State.  We were there "camper-ing" for a few days.  While beautiful, it was not tranquil.  Park rangers told us troops from NAS Whidbey Island will be deploying soon. They can tell by the increased training maneuvers overhead, nearly continuous at all hours of the day and night.  The rumble of the cargo planes and fighter jet engines sound from far off, coming closer until at times deafening overhead, then just as quickly receding, only to be repeated over and over.  By our third day, I could actually tune most of it out except for the roar directly over us.

Believe me, I feel pretty petty complaining about this.  I am proud of our military expertise.  I like that we are good at what we do and I know that getting good takes practice.  It's just that I never realized the practicing was so constant.  

That's because I don't have much history with the military.  Mine was not a military family.  My dad was rejected for WWII service on a medical deferment (which caused him great shame, that being the war all the men wanted to be part of).  My brother joined the Army on the "buddy system" in the early 70's but I was married and gone by then, and paid little attention.  Plus they split the buddies up and it seemed soon they were all home.  I never bothered to understand the whole story behind that.  (Oh, yes, I do regret how completely self-absorbed I was as a young woman.) And that's the extent of my personal knowledge of how the military works.  

My impersonal knowledge has been a knee-jerk uneducated bias based on distrust due to military excursions that, in my judgment, we had no business making.  But that has everything to do with politicians and little to do with the military itself.  I've learned to lay blame on those who make decisions, not those who carry them out.

All of this may be why I was so moved by a "military action" taken during a time of peace.  There is an unassuming and, unfortunately, nearly invisible museum at the Bowman Bay side of Deception Pass State Park near the campground --- a Civilian Conservation Corps Interpretative Center.  I spent a little over an hour there Wednesday afternoon, plenty of time to see the exhibits and view the short video explaining the CCC and what amazing work those men did in nine short years to clear, plant, build, and create a lasting legacy of nature conservation and state and national park infrastructure.  

In a time that was worse, but sounds mighty familiar lately, our country was in a deep economic depression.  Jobs were scarce, people were losing their homes, bread lines were long.  For young people at that time, opportunity was non-existent; a huge number had no high school education, some were illiterate.  Lacking in education and job skills, they were the most unemployable of the unemployed.  

FDR instituted a program whereby these young men, aged 18-25, would work on civilian conservation projects to earn money for their families back home while getting an education with on-the-job training in a variety of skills.  They would work at shoring up the neglected natural lands across the country, notably "out west", building roads, trails, bridges, and parks, fighting fires and planting seedlings.  

At the Interpretive Center, I read the first-person accounts of CCC camp life, looked at artifacts from the camps, saw photos of these men and their work.  Soon, I realized I was looking at all of it through a haze of tears.  I don't know why I was so moved by this exhibit.  Maybe it has something to do with these young men all looking like my dad, who was their age in 1935, and even a bit younger than my own boys are now.  Maybe it was the gratitude they all seemed to express for having been given this opportunity to help their families and learn a skill.  Maybe it was the appreciation for craftsmanship I've always felt whenever I've seen characteristically CCC-constructed structures in National and State Parks, so sturdy and so part of the natural setting in which they sit.

Maybe it's the idea that millions of people were helped by a huge government program that initially brought together four cooperating federal agencies -- The Departments of Labor, War, Agriculture, and Interior -- to oversee various aspects of the Civilian Conservation Corps. This peacetime initiative improved our access to and experience of the natural world for generations and showed that government has a role in creating programs that help its country's citizens.   The Republican candidate for president this election season was recently recorded stating his distaste for those who rely on government for assistance.  He apparently would not have been a proponent of the CCC, an idea which still seems like a good one (and in this day would also include women and integration of people of color).

As I took in the exhibit, with fighter jets running practice missions over the solid CCC structure which houses it, I thought about the ease with which we have used our government's resources to wage war, yet how vociferously we have argued about using those resources to help those in need.  I hope when you have a chance to visit this little gem of an exhibit, you will be inspired by this time of peaceful military might -- and then send a prayer for the safe return of those flying overhead.   There are many Sounds of Freedom.

 

At least, that's the view from here....©