Friday, March 24, 2017

The Forest Floor and Other Explorations

     Winter and spring have been duking it out but, I think spring has finally won. I love to walk into the woods this time of year. In general, I prefer walking in the fields and woods rather than on the roads, but they're usually too overgrown to enjoy in the warmer seasons and I don't feel safe out there during hunting season. Spring is the perfect time with the forest floor clear of brambles and weeds and hunters. I spotted plenty of new growth beginning to peek out from under the leaves.
     I entered the woods through the graveyard behind our property. I hadn't visited it in a long while and I wondered about its condition. Someone used to keep it trimmed but we haven't heard anyone back there for a couple of years now. I'm afraid it's fallen into a state of neglect. As I walked around the tombstones I thought how sad it was to see the place forgotten like this. On the other hand, I thought how appropriate for nature to slowly cover it over and entomb it completely.

From this rise, the graves are sentinels over the field and our house below.


The prettiest tombstone here.

Counting a life in years, months, and days. 
Several of the graves are marked simply like this. The newest stone is dated 1919. Everything else dates backwards from there. The surface of the graveyard is covered in Periwinkle. It is a carpet of blue when in bloom.
Traces of love. This is a beautiful ruffled variety of daffodil.
Unfurling

This was right on a deer path. I wonder of they eat this and if so, it must be a spring delicacy.

Next to the graveyard is an old animal enclosure. Based on its size, I'm guessing it may have been a pigpen. 
I'm reminded that everything is in a constant state of entropy.  (Is it we who have created the entropy and God simply calls it back to himself through his perfect creation of nature? Hmm. Although nature is in a fallen state, so... There's a good theological discussion in there.)
I see a beautiful walking stick here.

Do these hinges go in two different directions and how would that have worked? There is only one opening to the pigpen. Would the farmer who built this please come and explain this to me?

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for taking us along on the walk, Lee. I've walked through old cemeteries and always have found it interesting that many headstones noted the years, months and days the person had lived. And, those latches do seem at odds with one another.

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  2. What a lovely post! Some sweet souls planted those flowers around loved ones' resting places. So wonderful that the flowers come back to life year after year. And someone loved Elizabeth so much that they counted her life down like that. Lovely.

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  3. I love old graveyards. And I love this post.

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