Here in the cold reaches of Michigan, we’ve had nothing but rain, sleet and unhappy-looking clouds so far this year. Last weekend the weather finally broke and so I spent Sunday ignoring all my various WIPs and tramping around town.
We’ve got a 19th century graveyard here (possibly earlier–the earliest grave I saw was from 1812) and I spent a long time there. Old gravestones have so much artistry to them, from the variety of scripts to the individuality of the sculpture. I especially loved the one for a professor that had a book for the base stone. And then there are the simple, haunting ones, like the one that reads just “Mary and Baby.” Or the one that’s a rough boulder with a surname carved into the base. No first name, no dates.
I know a little bit about cemetery symbolism and time periods from a material history class in college, but I’ve always wanted to learn more. I’ve got a couple of books on the subject requested on interlibrary loan (Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography and Victorian Cemetery Art) and I’m going to take another field trip when they come in.
The graveyard was an accident–I was actually trying to find my way to Nichols Arboretum and ended up there by mistake. Eventually I made my way around and hiked down to the river. Back when we had a weird blip of nice weather in February, I bought a hammock on impulse, and though I didn’t use it then (even with global warming breathing down our necks, spring in Michigan in February was probably a little unlikely) it was great now. A Cherry Coke, a book (Alex Wells’ Hunger Makes the Wolf) and a hammock by the riverbank makes for an excellent afternoon.
I even found a snake friend:
Lina Rather 