Monuments and Memories at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. With Gratuitous Cats.

There was a bunneh holding a sunflower balloon when I got to Hodge's house on my birthday morning.  That night, there was Grandma Cree's lemon pound cake, swimming in lemon sauce and so, so delicious, to share with Hodge, husband John, Corey and Phoebe. How wonderful was that?

I have more images from Mount Auburn Cemetery, which is so rife with wonderful things to look at that I could probably blog from there for two years straight without running out of material. Add in the change of seasons, weather and light, and I could blog it for a lifetime.

I met bluestone on my birthday. A trip to Wikipedia leaves me confused as to whether this might be Pennsylvania or Shenandoah Valley bluestone; whether it's feldspathic sandstone (PA) or feldspathic greywacke (VA). Or neither. Dunno. The Webz being what they are, somebody might flutter in on little cupid's wings to tell me. Rocks. I love 'em, but I don't know 'em.

Look at what they can carve from this stuff, though. We found a family with fabulous bluestone tablets, marvelously hard and fine for detail.

I'm just guessing here, but I'm thinking the family name of Beebe might have something to do with the hive and its inhabitants carved hereon...Maybe they called Edward "Bee" in good New England fashion.

Loving the stylized wings that promise to lift these children (or their heads, anyway) into heaven. 

I'm not sure what's going on here, but we really dug this one, a sort of disgruntled face with a surprise turkeytail of feathers around it. If I had to guess I'd say it was an attempt at a likeness of the deceased.

This is a particularly lovely stone. I really love the botanicals on so many Mt. Auburn stones. 

Speaking of lovely botanicals, a sea change is occurring at Mount Auburn as management is emphasizing the use of native plants to beautify and attract pollinators. It's working!

The mound on which the viewing tower stands used to be landscaped, if I remember, in grass and shrubbery. Now, a native plant garden is springing to life!

I couldn't have been more thrilled to see these plantings, with tiger and spicebush swallowtails and silver-spotted skippers flitting through.

Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) and purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) are the big splashes of color. The butterflies were so happy. Butterflies in a cemetery lift the heart. Good going, MAC.

American goldfinches appreciate the seeds in all these coneflower heads, and they'll check out the bergamot come its time, too. A Baltimore oriole tootled overhead, red-eyed vireos sang; house wrens darted behind stones. It was divine to see what had been a non-descript hillside spring to life with unbridled meadows of native plants that belong and prosper here.

We climbed the tower for a breathtaking view of beautiful Boston. 

The light had a shimmery, surreal quality that made me feel as if the sky were putting on a show just for us.

Near Willow Pond, half-hidden beneath massive dawn redwoods (Metasequoia), Hodge showed us a gigantic boulder, cloven in half, that she'd never noticed before. It was the perfect compliment to the biologically ancient trees overhead. Corey swiped Phoebe's phone to shoot her portrait against the rock.

We grooved on some exotic hydrangeas on the way down to Willow Pond.

Since Phoebe's been working with Caroline Waller of Passiflora Studio, her already keen appreciation of flowers has expanded. She's helped Caroline pull off several weddings this summer, and learned volumes about floral husbandry, arranging, work and life. 

She now knows how to make these!

hence her enchantment with exquisite oakleaf hydrangeas such as inhabit Mount Auburn. She was itching to make bouquets! but of course restrained herself.

Watching the birdwatcher watching turtles at Willow Pond.

35 years ago, I found many life birds at Willow Pond. Vireos love weeping willows, and that's where I'd find them--white-eyed, yellow-throated, red-eyed, warbling--even Philadelphia sometimes!

To be there with my daughter and her love, well, that was a full-circle moment, one that filled my heart.

The paths beckoned us onward. 

We found more putti. I especially loved the artistry in these. Gorgeous faces, and pretty darn good wings, too, if you don't get too Science Chimpy about the two sets of secondaries or the overlap of the underwing coverts. Let's just say they're better than the bluestone wings.

Oh, the Easter lilies, singing of spirits rising again! One of my very favorite stones, natural and pleasingly asymmetrical, like nature herself.

Any trip to Mount Auburn would be incomplete without noting some of the weirdness that weather and acid rain wreaks. I'm always a bit creeped out by the sleeping children, but when they melt...

A cradle full of groundcover.

There is a dorm called Wigglesworth at Harvard. 

More weather-related alchemy... I'm pretty sure this little fella was not scowling when first installed. Hey! Where did my dadburn hands go??

We have lots of fairly irreverent fun at Mount Auburn, but we try to keep our chortling muffled.

Corey takes a dip at towertop.

Truly, one of the best birthdays ever. All right. I'm done celebrating, but I'll never be done reminiscing about time spent with people I love in a place I love too.

Gratuitous cat photos from Java Macomber

What? I wasn't just slouching unattractively.

Yes you were.

and her more decorous sister Star

who takes up a kitchen stool in a most delightful way.

These two are da bombs. I get a huge kick out of watching them interact with each other and totally manipulate Hodge and John into doing their every bidding, which revolves around (at last count) four metered daily feedings. Lots of very soft, pitiful coughy mewing and give-me-kibble-staredowns, all day long.

You forgot to top me off after the morning feeding.

Spirit Light

I wish I could convey to you the richness of having this audience of readers, of all that you bring to me. You might think that I'm just dishing out the content and you're taking it in without giving back, but oh, you do give back in so many ways. Lucy from Minnesota has helped me figure something out that has been puzzling me. Well, I'll never truly figure it out. At least I hope I don't. There should be things that pass understanding.

I remember a long time ago a reader wrote me to suggest that I take Free Will Astrology off my list of Useful Links. He thought it made me look kind of wifty, and he preferred not to see me as such. Hmm. I do believe there's something in astrology, however they've recalibrated the calendar. I feel like a Leo. I know Bill's a Pisces through and through. Liam's a card-carrying Scorpio. I love to guess people's signs based on what I've observed. I believe there are compatibilities and dysfunctions that can only be explained by the stars.  And what's wrong with any tool we might employ that helps us better understand our fellow human? Just because it's nothing anyone can prove doesn't mean it lacks validity.

The older I get, the more willing I am to believe that there are Unexplainables in this world. Things that no one can quantify or predict, results that can't be reproduced. Phenomena. For me, it's all part and parcel of listening to the little voice inside me, the one that tells me to look there right now! or get out that door before I miss my appointment with the merlin who's perched, waiting for me just around the bend. The one that tells me what a baby bird might need in its diet to thrive, or what might be going through someone else's head at any given moment. The voice that tells me what I need and how to get it, whether it happens to be a missing mineral or inner peace that I'm lacking. The more I dampen the big voices all around me, the ones that tell me what I should be doing, the better I hear the little voice, the one that connects me to the Universe.

So this churchyard has been calling to me, this building high atop a hill, one that's suffered the indignity of having a water tower plopped right in its front yard, and magnificently survived it. It stands, unheated and alone and miraculously unvandalized, year after year as unseen hands sweep it and let the birds out and mow its little cemetery and stack the unknown headstones when frost heave and mowers displace them.

I think Waxler Church has never been more beautiful than the morning of December 28, when the sun finally burned through our permacloud and set it in stark relief against a turquoise sky.

I prefer to photograph it from angles where the water tower doesn't show, but I see it bombed the photo above, sticking its face into the right margin.

The oldest stones you can read date from about 1840, and most of those are auf Deutsch.

I wander about, finding children, like six-year-old Earnest. Someone still puts flowers on his grave. Who?

I find my neighbors, who are both still alive, and am comforted that they will rest here eventually. 1974 doesn't seem that long ago. Married on DeLoris' birthday. Sweet.

I stand amazed before the stone of Lester and Linda, at the scene of bucolic (ox-filled) fields, Linda watching Lester atop his tractor, a dog by her side. I knew them both, slightly, the way one knows country neighbors, to wave to and sometimes stop and chat with. I'm touched by the intricate engraving on the stone, the way the tractor's clearly identified as a Deere. 

Linda told my neighbor Beth that Lester came home one day from working in the field, sat down in his recliner, and "his heart blew up." She lived in the little house for 14 more years, selling fresh brown eggs from the hens in the big pen beside it. I remember once when her Hereford bull got out and allegedly knocked down a mailbox on our road, and its owner brought a frivolous lawsuit against her, the way some people will, defying all logic and decency, just wanting a fight for its own sake. Yep, go after the widow who's trying to run 30 head of cattle by herself, atta boy.  Linda went, head hanging, door-to-door, asking for character witnesses. I helped as much as I could, writing a letter to the judge in her defense. None of that's on the stone, but it's inside me, and I think about it as I kneel by their stone. None of it matters now, but it mattered then, the case of the Errant Bull, the Widow and the Litigious Neighbor.

Someone has planted a landscape rose next to a stone. Wisely behind it, because those roses have growth power to burn and would soon overtake and cover the stone. Looking closely, I see the tattered remnants of last summer's nest in the upper right branch of the bush. From the materials and placement, I surmise that this nest belonged to indigo buntings. It's a classic bunting site. They usually choose a shrub so small and spindly that no predator would think to look in it for a nest. The other choice would be field sparrow, but the materials suggest bunting. Perfect. I want to come back in spring and listen for their song, confirm my hunch that a cocoa-brown female bunting sat her speckled blue eggs in this nest.

I wonder whose stone it might be, so I move around to take a photo.

Ada Louise Hune. She passed in 1947 at the tender age of 15. This bit of information hits me with a wallop, I with my grace-filled 17-year-old daughter still sleeping in her bed at home. I photograph the stone and linger, thinking about how perfect it is that an indigo bunting would raise its family here, with Ada below.

When I get home and upload the photos, I'm startled by what I see. Yes, I was facing into the light, and it was low early morning light, but I've taken probably 4,000 photos with this little gizmo and have never had my iPhone react to light in this way. A shimmering rainbow orb hovers before Ada's stone. I haven't Photoshopped it. I don't even own the program. This is it, just what the camera saw. As I look at it, I'm filled with wonder and joy and peace, as if Ada has somehow managed to send a message from beyond, as if she's thrilled I noticed her and her bunting nest and stopped to linger and think about her, wonder who she was. My nose starts to sting and my eyes well up at the thought. Something has happened here, but I don't know, can't say what. Something. The little voice is speaking.

And then just a few days later I get a letter from a reader, Lucy from Minnesota, who lost her husband in the last year and as it was happening wrote to tell me how much this blog and especially the antics and voice of Chet Baker meant to her and her family. She'd read his Facebook status updates to her husband Arch, and even after he lost his ability to speak, she could tell how much they brightened his day. Cavendish, their Boston terrier, still looks for Arch in his office each night before they go to bed. That's how we met, through Lucy's letter of gratitude those months ago. I was deeply moved that Chet and I, with my silly way of channeling his thoughts and desires, had had a small part in making Arch's passing a little gentler for Lucy and their two beautiful kids. You never know who you touch when you reach out. It's invisible, but it's there nonetheless. I feel it.

I hadn't shared this photo with anyone yet. I hadn't written about it, either. It was locked up in my mind. In her letter, Lucy unwittingly gave me a key to understanding what might be happening here. I'll quote  her.

" I don't share this with a lot of people, but I see "spirit lights", and sounds like you do too. (Well, I am not aware that I do, but my camera seems to!) We really miss Arch's human energy and being the family of 4 our kids have always known. Seeing lights is not the same as a warm hug or a heart to heart conversation or a shared laugh but at least you have some reassurances. 

"When you and Chet posted the blog about visiting the country church I kept re-reading it. Not only because it was so perfect, but because I saw so many sparkles and orbs on and around my phone I couldn't clearly see the words. You really woke the dead on that one. Your thoughts were wise, and sometimes funny, and the parishioners must have been delighted by Chet's return(?). Lord knows where that fella was before he chose the ZT family. I wanted to message you right away, but it was our last day on the island when I read it and we were busy still taking things in. Anyway you probably were aware you stirred things up a bit and I think they all got a kick out of it. I look forward to future visits you and Chet might make to that lovely cemetery and church and really hope the RainCrows get to play there. I think the spirits do too. "

Wow. Could those be spirit lights around Ada Louise's stone? I never even knew there was a name for them. Perhaps someone with experience in the paranormal can look at this and tell me. Lucy?? I just know that there's got to be a reason burial grounds are sacred across cultures and centuries. Something's happening here. I feel the Waxler Church and the people I know there calling out to me. Not in a spooky weird way, just in a "come see us" way. A good way. Like they enjoy the new living energy I bring to their resting place. Like they like to hear me sing in what was once their church, and just maybe still is.

Turkey vulture totem feather, mystery message from above, lit now by the morning sun. I have come here to see this, the light of this hour.

Whatcha lookin' for, little man?

Seeing With New Eyes

Sunny day. Meeting two bluebirds who know us. That's about as good as it gets here in winter. Chet and I forge on. I can tell it's going to be an epic run. It already has been.

This landscape sets me free. We climb atop what I call Butterflyweed Hill and look back up the road toward home. I like getting different perspectives on this land I think I know. What does it look like from there? What about from there?  Let's see. I like living in a place where nobody seems to mind my doing that. If they asked, I'd tell them I was working. This is my work, noticing what's here, appreciating it, sharing it. It's just that it isn't a paying job in the conventional sense.

They've all seen me dozens of times, and know I'm harmless. Most people probably think I'm nuts, being out in all kinds of weather with my little dog. There's that crazy lady who jogs, climbs hills, looks around, takes pictures. Wonder what she does with all those pictures?

Nuffin'. 

We pass a car which turns out to be a 1968 Chevelle (Chevy Malibu with a different trim package). I learn all this from my friends Paul and Dirk, and confirm it with a look at the nameplate on the back. Truth told, I just like its lines, and the way the rust works with the white and the colors of the field around. It reminds me of an impala, not a Chevy Impala, but the African animal, with its rust to white countershading.

We move on, and the next person we meet is Coco. 

She is a perfect lady. She's the dog I told you about, who was abandoned on our county road. Mr. G. took her in and she's had three litters and made him $3,000 by his account. But he says he wouldn't take a million dollars for her. She is a wonderful dog. Also a member of the No Collar Club, I see. She lives on a busy county road where the cars fly, and she's got the sense to avoid them.  That right there tells you a lot about her.

Chet behaves himself around her, which speaks volumes about her manners and dignity.  An intact female, and he doesn't even get fresh with her. Go figure. She commands respect.

His shaved patch from the run-in with the German shepherd shines, and I wonder if he barged into her and surprised her on one of his conquests, if Coco would bite him, too. These are the chances we take when we live our lives and run the roads. We could sit home, growing plumper by the day, but we choose to move instead, to vary our view as we grow plumper by the day anyway. In a flurry of weirdness on Chet's birthday post, the one where he gets beat up by a German shepherd, one commenter wrote that she felt "very sorry for Chet," having a careless owner like me. Well, please don't waste any time feeling very sorry for this dog. He lives a fully interactive life as an athlete who gets to explore and run miles every day over new terrain. He is not a piece of inert animal furniture, leashed, fenced, overfed and cosseted like so many house pets.  Every day he has a choice as to whether to accompany me, and he gives me two paws up.

I love him for that. I wonder what I would do if I had a dog who could say no to a good run. And then I remember that we make our dogs who they are, and I feel better.

Done with Chet, Coco comes over to get some kisses on her sweet fuzzy nose from me.  I like Chet's pugnacious little bunnyface shadow, cast on Coco's satiny mocha-latte flank. Her skin slides all around on her ample frame, quite a contrast to tight-muscled, tight-coupled, drumlike little Chet.

We are in a hurry to get to the Waxler Church before the morning rays of sun get too high. I cannot wait to see it on a sunny day. I've never been there on a sunny day.

Ohhh. Even better than I'd dreamt. I'm so glad I've hurried and gotten here by 8 AM. The bounce light from the ground warmly illuminating the belfry, the sun coming through its windows, the way the skylight blues its shadowed side. Wow. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. This church calls me, all its people call to me across the miles. I find myself wondering how it looks in every light regime, and wanting to be there for each one. 

I love how someone has decorated the Booths' stone for Christmas, and I wonder if the little toy trucks were there before. There is so much I notice each time I come here, and wonder how I missed before. 

I find our neighbor Gayle's stone, realizing with a start that the recently turned ground where I stand (and instinctively jump aside) has yet to cover over with grass. The crabgrass covers first, of course, followed by the perennial grass. I should have noticed that. I used to talk with him as he mowed the fields, and I was at his funeral. It was there I first heard a recording of Vince Gill singing "Go Rest High On That Mountain." How had I never heard that song? How had I never seen this fresh-turned earth or Gayle's stone before?

Visiting this quiet churchyard is so much like entering the woods, picking up on things you've never seen or, more correctly, have never noticed.  It's like hearing a beautiful song that everyone else seems to know and love for the very first time, and wondering how it eluded you. 

I walk around in a state of wonder at all I've missed.