Secure Yourself to Heaven/Graveyard Interlude

It was a busy day, in which we did many things. In the morning, we went over to the gameland and my husband jogged and I walked. I showed you the pathway there a few days ago, when it was atrocious and phantasmagorical. Well, the rain has taken all of the ice and snow, and the pathways are all MUD now, everywhere.

The milkweed seeds are stunning, even this time of year, and we ran into a hunter, working with his hounds. There were six or seven beagles, and they were amazing and beautiful and curious and fun, with floppy, soft ears; all had radio collars on, and they turned and obediently followed their man into the brush. I missed the howling and carrying on because I had headphones on and my tunes box rocking, but my husband said he thought at first it was coyotes or wolves!

In the afternoon, he wanted to take my newer car and gas it up, at the Exxon at Carson's Corners. Oh, and did I want to ride along? He could drop me off at the little graveyard, Gray's Cemetery, along the way. It has many grave stones of various ages, trees, a tiny crypt, and a white gazebo that I have enjoyed capturing the sunset through on the shortest of winter days.

Well, how could I RESIST such an offer? And so it was that he stopped along route 550 and I popped out, with camera, and spent 11 whole minutes in this beautiful rural graveyard, the cemetery of the red-tailed hawk. (And by the way, I think this would be a fine photography exercise: you have 11 minutes in a cemetery. What all can you see and photograph?)

The cemetery is sort of sprawling, and the oldest graves are furthest from the two entry points where you hoss your car into the cemetery (for traffic can be surprisingly busy along route 550 at times). It's a few minutes to walk it, but only one or two if you RUN. So I RAN to the furthest point, since my time was limited, then moseyed my way back through, looking at graves, straightening things, speaking old names.

There is a tree in this part of the cemetery that I love beyond words, and you are looking at it now. In October it puts on an orange show but it is gorgeous and craggy and gnarly at all times of year. It holds two grave stones to its tree-heart; protects them. One says Our Mother. The other says Eliza Jane. Oh, and framed by this tree is a very nice local farm.

I have a grave plot reserved back home in St. John's Cemetery, among my family, and my husband has one too. They were gifted me by my father long before I understood the importance of such plans. (Wherever big sister Barb has gone, I'm going there too!) Had I not a plot of my own, I'd seek one here, in this pretty cemetery on a hill. Where the hawk cries its wild cry and the good trees hold us close, so tight, to their gnarly beating tree-hearts.

My soundtrack song is this beauty, by the Indigo Girls: Secure Yourself.

Secure yourself to heaven.
Hold on tight, the night has come
Fasten up your earthly burdens,
You have just begun.