You could never imagine until you've been there

Ground Zero takes up two city blocks.\nThis statement lacks meaning until you understand the term "concrete jungle" is the most accurate description of New York City you will ever have.\nIn a city where trees are a rare commodity, space is nonexistent and you're more likely to look up and see a skyscraper than the sky, it's a punch in the gut to round the corner to see -- emptiness.\nIt feels more like a magic trick than reality. You half expect David Copperfield to slide up from behind you, tell you it's an illusion and that after you cut the deck, he can make it reappear.\nBut on Sept. 11, terrorists made it permanently disappear, and the country was left to clean up the nightmare left behind.\nGround Zero no longer looks like the mountain of hellish debris we watched on CNN. Once you shuffle through the line that winds half way around the block and make your way up to the viewing dock, you peer over the ledge to see a scene that looks like it's from a James Bond movie.\nFrom a semi-aerial view, you can see cement trucks, vans and cranes, all kicking up what appears to be miniscule tufts of dust and you wonder what, specifically, they're up to.\nWhat was once the foundation of the World Trade Center has now been reduced to dirt and is, for the most part, completely smooth.\nThe walls of the seven-story quarry have been torn out, revealing layers of structural cake that was once a parking garage. One can count stories by tallying the horizontal red beams remaining at each level.\nMassive metal spotlights tower over the workstation, shedding light on the unpleasant subject matter below so construction can continue around the clock.\nWorkers running around at the bottom look like tiny ants. One has to wonder if that many "ants" could fit into the gaping hole, how many more of them could fit into, and flee from, the two World Trade Centers. How many of them were reduced to their most base, animalistic instincts as they scrambled to escape with their lives?\nMiles of tarps were set up on surrounding buildings from where windows had been blown out and plane parts had slammed into it and, again, one has to wonder what was it like for the tiny but significant person standing near the windows as sheer force and metal blasted through their glass wall and their lives?\nThoughts that never occurred to me before rushed in all at once, making me mentally strangled and eager to leave.\nWhile winding my way out of the viewing area, I passed a woman standing mid-stream in the human traffic flow. People parted around her as she admonished her mother to stop taking pictures of the site.\n"You realize those pictures aren't going to capture anything near what it is, don't you?" the woman said, as she escorted her mom away.\nWhich is absolutely true -- the only things people will probably see in their photographs are blurry fence lines and a construction site.\nEven though I saw Ground Zero in person, I felt cheated out of the full comprehension of what happened -- no matter how horrific that comprehension may have been.\nI was hoping to have some sort of reality hit home that I couldn't get in Indiana, but the emotions didn't spring from the "improved" Ground Zero.\nThey came from the memorials set up on its outskirts. From pictures pinned to fences. From the miles of tarp streaming down surrounding buildings, masking the scars where windows were blown in. From the street vendors who were profiting from death. From survivors who recounted their experiences in such vivid detail you would think it happened yesterday. From visitors who had come in from all over the world to mourn the loss.\nFrom New Yorkers, who have -- through perseverance and Rubbermaid attitudes -- recovered their lives and now serve as a beacon to friends and middle finger to foes who would make futile attempts to destroy the freedom we cherish.