I will never forget the first time I saw
and the first that I climbed the steps
of the “Wilder Tower” – the lightning tower…
I will never forget the silence that I heard
and the feeling of peace that I felt
when I stood atop the stone-built tower
that stands as a monument in a former battlefield
in Chickamauga, Georgia…
I will never forget and I could never truly describe
what I was thinking and what it meant to me
to be where I was and with whom I was with…
I will never forget what came over me,
nor how fast my heart was beating,
as we were standing and looking below and beyond
to the green-grass and to the trees
that stretch to the horizon in almost every direction…
I felt as if I had always been meant to be there,
and as if the tower itself had been calling to me
and beckoning to me all my life.
The Wilder Tower stands tall and steady,
and over the years since its construction first began
it has literally weathered everything:
from a delay in its building,
to being hit during a thunder-storm
by a bolt of blue-lightning…
the Wilder Tower is magnetic
and it is a place that draws people to it…
the Wilder Tower is somewhere anybody can go
to climb, to stop, to think,
and to call out for an answer
from whomever may be listening…
the Wilder Tower is a powerful place
to find inspiration if you are romantic
or artistically-inclined,
especially if you a young-lover,
an artist, and a poet.
To some people, a building is just a building …
to some people, a tower is just a tower…
to some people, a memorial to a battle
is just a reminder of a violent past –
however, to me, certain places have great meaning
and they have the draw and the gravity
that they do for reasons
that are sometimes spiritual in nature…
our planet – the world that gives us
all that we could ever possibly want or need –
has many places on it that will forever have a memory
imbued and associated with it
that will always make them places
that are meaningful and special…
I have stood atop skyscrapers –
from the towering Empire State Building
to the beautiful Rockefeller Center in New York City –
and though those buildings and the skylines
that I saw will stay with me forever
in my memories that I will always remember,
nothing and nowhere could compare
to the first time that I stood looking at,
climbing the stairs of,
and then standing atop of
and high-above the ground,
with my heart in my hands,
while smiling and in-awe
of the 85-foot tall
Wilder Tower.
