nature and graveyards
Last weekend I had to take a detour from my normal route to mama's house because of roadwork, and I discovered that my usual route was a lot closer to Chautauqua wine country than I thought! I also saw some beautiful abandoned houses and country cemeteries. I had the cats with me last weekend, so this weekend I decided to take the drive without them, so that I could stop as much as I wanted without having to deal with kitty bitching.
It rained the entire way. I kind of loved it. Colorful leaves, crazy turbulent skies, creepy abandoned buildings, and FOUR country graveyards. Such an awesome road trip.
I've never met a graveyard that I didn't want to explore, and the route I took had so many half-hidden little country graveyards. None of them had much of a plan - graves would face every which way, with the only organization being among family members. Graves from the 1920s and 1930s would be right next to graves from the mid-1800s, and many of the gravestones were tumbled and illegible. Two of the graveyards were on bluffs overlooking rivers on much lower ground. One graveyard was just a tiny strip on the side of a road. One graveyard had obviously not been cared for in several years.
Abandoned buildings tend to scare me a lot more than graveyards. I understand rationally how they come about (someone dies or moves away and no one wants their house, or the bank takes the house and then leaves it to rot, a congregation decides that they need a bigger church, or they join forces with another congregation), but my horror-fed imagination conjures up grisly murder scenes, hauntings... any awful reason why such beautiful buildings would be unclaimed after so long. And I always expect to see faces peering at me from broken windows while I take pictures.
It rained the entire way. I kind of loved it. Colorful leaves, crazy turbulent skies, creepy abandoned buildings, and FOUR country graveyards. Such an awesome road trip.
I've never met a graveyard that I didn't want to explore, and the route I took had so many half-hidden little country graveyards. None of them had much of a plan - graves would face every which way, with the only organization being among family members. Graves from the 1920s and 1930s would be right next to graves from the mid-1800s, and many of the gravestones were tumbled and illegible. Two of the graveyards were on bluffs overlooking rivers on much lower ground. One graveyard was just a tiny strip on the side of a road. One graveyard had obviously not been cared for in several years.
Abandoned buildings tend to scare me a lot more than graveyards. I understand rationally how they come about (someone dies or moves away and no one wants their house, or the bank takes the house and then leaves it to rot, a congregation decides that they need a bigger church, or they join forces with another congregation), but my horror-fed imagination conjures up grisly murder scenes, hauntings... any awful reason why such beautiful buildings would be unclaimed after so long. And I always expect to see faces peering at me from broken windows while I take pictures.
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