I didn’t feel like coming back to the hotel tonight and needed to keep busy. I decided I’d go walk around a bit. I thought a good place to start, in light of the last two days of 9/11 hearings here in NYC, might be Ground Zero.

I’ve been to the site before. My wife and I visited earlier this year, and walked around the fence a time or two. I took lots of pictures. In fact, I think I might have been so fixated on capturing those images that I didn’t allow the emotional impact to sink in. So this time, I left the camera back at the hotel and resolved to make this visit a respectful one.

I emerged from the subway at Rector Street, just a bit south of the site, and walked north until I reached the steel viewing fence at the southern boundary of the site. The street is one most of us have seen many times, it’s the same street where that famous footage was shot of the crowd, running madly to escape the clouds of debris from the collapsing south tower. I tried to imagine what it was like to stand on that street on that September morning, and failed.

The sheer size of the area devastated in the attacks two and a half years ago is staggering. It’s difficult to imagine, even when you’re standing at its edge. 19 football fields would fit into the area that was leveled that day. NINETEEN! Even if you think you understand the size and scale of this place, you don’t. Not unless you’ve stood at that fence and taken it in. Personally. It’s just too big for the mind’s eye to measure.

The area where the twin towers once stood, dominating a huge plaza and towering over several smaller buildings, is now a gigantic hole. It’s about ten stories deep, its concrete walls studded with tiebacks and buttresses that hold back the hydraulic force of the Hudson river, just a couple of blocks to the west. Just after the collapse, that hole was filled with debris — in fact, the debris heap towered two to three stories above ground level. Again, I tried to imagine what that must have looked like, if I were standing amid those ruins, and failed.

I walked slowly around the perimeter. Each new angle, each new vista brought new understanding, and new horror. I tried to put myself in the shoes of one of the rescue workers, digging through an unimaginably huge pile of rubble, searching for fragments of lives, fragments of people, fragments of families … and failed.

Affixed to the fence are several huge plaques, and on those plaques are the names of those who died here. I could not read them. I stood and took in the sheer size of the plaques, the tiny size of the type, the thousands of names. A man stepped up next to me, apparently seeing the same thing, and crossed himself. I fervently wished I were catholic, just for a moment, so I could do the same, because I couldn’t think of a suitable protestant equivalent and the gesture seemed so appropriate. (How does that go? Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch?) Instead, I did something that surprised even me. I tried to keep my composure and hold back a tear. And failed.

After saying a quick prayer, I needed a change of scene, and a ride on the Staten Island Ferry sounded right. (The Ferry is one of the few things left in New York that’s still free!) I hopped back on the subway, got off at South Ferry, hopped on the first boat, and enjoyed a splendid, windy, beautiful night crossing over to Staten Island. I got a cup of coffee, walked around the terminal, hopped right back on the same boat, and rode right back! The wind was whipping quite briskly out on the bay, the night was cool, and the view of lower Manhattan was breathtaking as it grew larger and larger off the bow until we finally arrived at the dock … and the “captain” threw a few passengers off their feet with a rough docking! Must have been his first day.

I stopped off in Times Square for a quick dinner while reflecting on the events of the evening. It was hard not to continue thinking of 9/11. The images of the site etch themselves into memory like New York grafitti, daring you to try and wipe them away. One building down there, known as the Bankers Trust Building, had its side ripped open by a giant steel girder that fell from the south tower. Its owners once considered tearing it down … piece by piece, rather than by implosion, because it was thought that New Yorkers couldn’t bear to see another building fall, just yet. Tonight, I saw lights inside that building, and the gash in its side is well on the way to being repaired. A new “7 World Trade Center” is also rising at the north border of the site. Other battle-scarred buildings are getting face-lifts too. Yakov Smirnoff’s banner has come down, replaced by a huge moving scaffold from which workers are refacing the old, damaged art-deco building on which it once was hung.

Like all war wounds, this one is healing slowly. Many have taken it upon themselves to politicize this event, to use it to their advantage. Spin doctors are everywhere. What everyone misses, though, is that something much simpler makes this ground sacred — something that, as Abraham Lincoln once said of another battlefield, hallows it “far beyond our meager power to add or detract.”

This is the place where someone tried to kill the American Spirit. Like the inept ferry captain, they tried to knock us off our feet, tried to strike at the heart of one of our greatest cities and destroy the pride, the courage, and the resolve of the American people.

And failed.