Time and Eternity

AMPLE make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.
Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise’ yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.
~ Emily Dickinson ~

There is a pretty little cemetery on a hill near Pennsylvania Furnace that I have been coveting for years and years. It isn't immediately obvious how to get there, so I spent some time driving all around it looking for an access road. No luck.

Then I stumbled across a website of local cemeteries that laid it out for me plainly how to get there. And so on this morning, while the light was lovely before the storms came, I went and checked it out.

The cemetery includes graves that date from the latter half of the 1800s up through about the 1920s. Numerous grave decorations indicate that there are many veterans here.

The cemetery was looking especially lovely on this morning, clean, well organized, and tidy. I suspect that is because Memorial Day was earlier this week, and all of the cemeteries pay extra attention to making sure everything is spiffy and nice for all of the visitors.

I am a lover of cemeteries, and I seize every opportunity to visit one. These little rural cemeteries are often nothing more than a few plots and headstones tucked into the green rolling hills of central Pennsylvania. They are often surrounded by cows, which I find inexplicably charming.

One of the things I like to try to do with my photos is to frame the shot in such a way that you get a sense of place. Down the hill you can see the black and white cows strolling about a green field, chomping happily away. There is a little white farm house in the background, and across the road, a huge barn which you can see just part of.

To the right just outside of frame is Fairbrook Manor, the estate of Pennsylvania iron magnate John Lyon. He built it in 1834 and it was originally called The Cedars. The property, which includes a huge stone mansion and a small lake, has been for sale for a number of years; I suspect most locals don't have the $3 million asking price. It seems like a property that would make an outstanding B&B. It gives the area a feeling of being . . . historical.

And so it was that I finally stood in that pretty little cemetery I have coveted for years. And all around me, it was peaceful. It is at times like this that I think there must be nowhere prettier than rural central Pennsylvania to lay one's weary bones down in, when one is done with them.

Here among these green rolling hills, amid these lovely old stones, through the tall trees that the light caresses so beautifully in the mornings, and surrounded by fields of contented black and white cows, I honor those who lie here. I visit them like they are family; I read their stories; I carry them in my heart for a while.

The soundtrack: Warren Zevon, Keep Me In Your Heart.