Dustin Beall Smith
Dustin Beall Smith worked until his midfifties as a key grip in the movie business (“an industry,” he says, “that eats its young and discards its elders”). He now teaches at Gettysburg College, and his essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the Gettysburg Review, River Teeth, and the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Shade
A Letter From Gettysburg
I didn’t learn about the tree-cutting program at Gettysburg National Military Park until I saw early evidence of its implementation. Just north of the hill known as Little Round Top, more than a hundred large trees — maples, oaks, tulip trees, mulberries, magnolias, cedars, hickories, and ash — were felled and hauled away in a matter of weeks.
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