I think this is about the coolest thing I've ever seen at a historical site. I went to the little town of St. Mary's here in Lexington Park to walk my dogs and get some nature back into my system. This little town is right on the edge of the Potomac, you can see the river through those trees in the background. There is a very old cemetery there, where I took this picture. Graves date back to the 1600's.
This is a headstone, and a footstone, of the same person's grave. (People used to have both head and foot stones, marking the size of the grave) (a tombstone is flat like a tabletop). And a huge tree is growing right out of the middle of it. The roots of this beautiful tree run down into the grave. It's the most perfect example of life and death I've ever seen.
Cemeteries do not bother me at all. Nothing bad happened in cemeteries (not usually). These people died elsewhere, and were brought her to REST. Final RESTING place. I find cemeteries have the calmest energy anywhere. I dunno - I guess I think that if there ARE spirits, and those spirits are restless, they are doing their thing where their energy was expended and extinguished.
Not to get all woo-woo on you, but it was a good walk, anyway.
I used to try to make rubbings of tombstones. Poorly I might add.
ReplyDeleteI can walk around all day there. Reading epitaphs and seeing a whole families evolution.
I like cemetaries too. Here in Chicago we have this cemetary called Graceland Cemetary. We used to live within walking distance and we'd wander around the mausoleums and read graves for hours. It's like being in a dead people bookstore.
ReplyDeleteI'm also a big Buffy/Angel fan, and after watching so many scenes set in graveyards, it's like a totally legit setting.
I love cemetery walking. It's one of my hobbies. I try to find the oldest, most decrepit cemeteries and take down the information off the stones and submit it to interment.net. Ancestry is fascinating, probably because I want to know about the people I'm related to that maybe aren't as fucked up as my direct ascendents. I agree about the evolution thing, Q. You can see a guy with one wife buried to his left and the next wife to his right and they're surrounded by all these childrens' stones and more adult family members. It paints a sometimes sad but always fascinating picture.
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