As we walk the blazing black asphalt,
manicured and graded for modern passage,
we can scarcely imagine these same footsteps,
trod by General McClellan and traversed
by the very fugitives that he fought to free.

The civil peace was broken when the machinery came,
ripping railroad ties and spikes from her gut,
erasing and smothering the Confederate footsteps,
gentrifying the mud for our convenience,
replaced by the smooth tar of unification.

This new Mason-Dixon did not divide peoples;
it conected communities.

Now on our bikes we don our spandex and lycra in Alexandria -
no shoveling of coal for this engine -
with a sip of our energy elixir,
whizzing over the Sycolin bridge and past Tuscarora Creek,
quickly turning around in Purcellville for the return trip.