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| Deer Isle, Maine |
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| Deer Isle, Maine |
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| Deer Isle, Maine |
Maine's rural graveyards are a world apart from the vast cemeteries that look like parks in urban areas. We often share common ground with our dead. Tiny enclosures and meadows beside old clapboard houses, sprinkled with weather worn tilted stones, can be found along the side of our roads everywhere. I think of these places as story fields of people who celebrated similar joys and sorrows and whose eyes once gazed on the same lovely coastal views as I do now. The burying grounds are beautiful to photograph in all seasons, but I think they are especially moving in winter. Still and silent with a tracery of shadows, one sees only a scattering of small animal tracks barely breaking the surface of deep snow. For now, they are the only intruders in these cold winter gardens.
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On Shawnee Mission Parkway, the bustling artery that will take you to the Plaza for "world class shopping" there are several pocket cemeteries. Crammed cheek to jowl the monuments stand in space carved out of today's backyards, they stand there as witnesses to another America.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I am going to be cremated and thrown from Dixie cups into my garden. It's not that I am rallying Southern Dixie maniac, it refers to an innocent party in junior high when it was only Dr. Pepper in our cups when a boy filled with youthful exuberance cried out, "Save the Dixie cups, the South will rise again." Such silliness. Think it's appropriate somehow.
Love the tracks in the snow to remind us our world is always more complicated and life-filled than it seems.
home before dark ~ I expect little pockets of burial grounds encroach on many backyards and properties. We have friends in Maryland who often have archeologists out on their farm...the most grisly find, a 17th century skeleton tossed in an ancient garbage dump. That story ran in "The History Detectives." Personally, I don't want to spend eternity warehoused on a museum shelf, so going out in a Dixie cup sounds like a good plan!
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