I love days when both of the girls are at school. If I don't have a program, the day belongs to me. I went back out to East Fork State Park, where I had birded on Sunday.
The birding was fairly boring, so I checked out other areas of the park, and found a Native American burial mound:
...And a few stray cats, who were not interested in being rescued.
The orange cat gave me quite a start, because as I was driving by, I thought he was a fox.
There is an old Methodist church smack dab in the middle of the park, with a graveyard behind it. 
I'm not a superstitious person, so cemeteries don't bother me. I don't think that the living dead are going to burst out of the graves with skeletal hands to drag me down. All I felt was sadness, tinged with a great sense of peace.
It's the children's graves that get to me the most.
This baby girl was born and died in the same year.
At the back of the graveyard, in a seemingly forgotten corner, were 56 graves marked as "Unknown". I wonder why there were so many unknown bodies to be buried in this small cemetery? I think I may have to Google that.
Ever present, fungus looks out over a field of stones.
In a place dedicated to death, I found a sign of life:
A well-worn path, made by some animal, traced from the graveyard to a small opening in the foundation of the church.
6 comments:
Did the graves of the unknowns have dates? They may have been victims of the Great Yak Stampede of 1839.
Swami has a good point. It might have been an epidemic or something.
How do you know the well worn path was made by an animal? Maybe it was made by the living dead, waiting to burst out from the ground and grab unsuspecting passer-bys. Thanks for giving me that image, honey. I think I'll be sleeping with the lights on tonight.
Nice post. I would be very satisfied to find all that history in one walk. I find old cemeteries so interesting...and that is no ghost path!
You had a day I'm longing for. Peaceful, quiet, observant. Great use of that new camera, Susan!
Nice post, Susan. The baby stones get me, too. I can send myself into a whole reconstruction of a family's life just looking at the stones. It's a special mood that you evoke perfectly.
That looks like a possum path to me. They are the ultimate creatures of habit, and like to walk the same path every time they emerge. We have timeworn possum paths here, going along the edge of the yard to the compost pile. Possum have a rather wide wheelbase so they make a substantial rut. Of course, Geoff is right: it could be a vampire ghost possum. Beware!
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