A New Years Day Outing
Despite our recent trip to South Dakota, Starr and I were feeling stagnant and bored. We needed to get out of the house!
I suggested the old and reportedly haunted, pioneer graveyard that DJ and I visited a couple months ago. She had been there several times with friends in the middle of the night…the ghost stories are always draw for the teen set…but she always waited in the car. Chicken! A daytime visit was something that she has always wanted to do.
We didn’t find any ghosts, but we did spend quite a bit of time wandering around. Starr enjoyed taking pictures.
We found several pennies placed on the grave markers. Here is an example that I found in Starr’s pictures of one of the headstones. I hadn’t heard of this practice, so I looked it up. Frankly, I’m still not sure, but I did find an interesting discussion about it on a Flickr message board.
A majority of the graves are unmarked. Just a stone, a brick, or a simple cross.
Walking among these markers, it is easy to forget that each one marks the life of a loved one. Whose life may have been long or short, who may have been a baby, a child, a spouse or parent. Just like us. These thoughts lead me back to the question of why. Why? What is the meaning of it all? Life and inevitable death.
Despite these thoughts, it was a good day.
