OLUSTEE - A marching snare sounds its rhythm, then quiets.
Artillery booms and resounds, a group of palm trees rocking in its echo.
Hundreds of dusty soldiers still and take aim.
These were the precursors to the resurrected Battle of Olustee, fought more than a century ago in the midst of the Civil War, yet still relived every year on a burnt patch of forest outside of Lake City.
The Confederate and Union soldiers of 1864 probably never guessed that the tract of land they killed and died upon would be used for the weekend's 30th Annual Olustee Battle Festival, a family-friendly event where bearded men would wear wool and chat on cell phones, and where women in laced gloves and wide dresses would need to use specially designed portable toilets.
But maybe they would recognize the plumes of smoke and fired muskets, the officers on horseback and the wind-twisted flags, the play-dead men splayed upon clumped grass and bent twigs.
If those Civil War soldiers had brushed off their mortal wounds and lived until today, could they comprehend the sounds they heard from outside the battlefield: the throaty hums of bus engines, the barking dogs locked up in trailers, the smoky sizzling from barbecue grills?
Would they question why the chaplain had smeared theatrical blood on his undershirt?
Or would they just grab their gunpowder, fall in line and exclaim to their commanding officer what their re-enacting brothers would: "We whooped 'em, colonel!"
