(INTRO) For commentator Mary McCallum, winter sledding brings back more than memories of childhood fun.
(MCCALLUM) Now that much of Vermont is covered with a delicate layer of white, I’ve been thinking about winters past and one of the haunts of my childhood.
When school closings were announced on early morning radio we grabbed our wooden sleds and headed for the cemetery. Its gently rounded hilltop and wide road down the middle were perfect for sledding.
Bundled in snowsuits so thick they made our arms stand out straight, we trudged up and down the slope for hours past the crooked old headstones of the long departed. Shrieks of glee rang through the cold stillness as our metal runners carved icy gray stripes into new snow.
My little sister and I continued to hang out in our cemetery during the summer, when we watched funerals from a distance and admired the bouquets up close after all the cars left . During spring cleanup we raided the dump area where the town worker threw away piles of faded plastic roses and carnations. We brought home small bouquets for our mother, who told us to quit bringing her dirty old plastic flowers from graves.
Since then I’ve had an affinity for cemeteries, and I’ve discovered that I’m not alone. An artist friend did a mysterious looking charcoal drawing of a local burying ground forgotten by time. It lies up a short woodland trail. It’s frail gate opens to a small hummocky clearing where filtered sunlight shines down on lichen covered stones from the early eighteen hundreds. The drawing was one of the first pieces that sold at her gallery opening.
Another friend is drawn to a slate marker from 1803 in his town cemetery that memorializes a woman named Rebecca and her fourteen dead children, all but one who died before they could be christened. I stopped by one day last fall to see the famous marker and sat on the stone wall around the perimeter to eat an apple. The silence of the surrounding forest was like a benediction.
Vermont has close to 2,000 cemeteries tucked away on winding back roads, forest clearings and windy hilltops. Some go back to the 1700s. There?s a special group of old cemetery aficionadoes who’ve banded together to restore and preserve the state’s neglected burying grounds. This Vermont Old Cemetery Association has hundreds of members and has published guides for locating cemeteries and reading the history carved in their stones.
Let’s face it, most people wouldn’t think of making road trips to visit places full of dead people. But to me they are full of hidden stories of lives once lived to the fullest.
In reading the markers we learn about epidemics that robbed towns of children and their mothers, young men who marched off to war, and old men who outlived multiple wives. We can appreciate the early American folk art carvings and the warning epitaphs chiseled into many of the stones. In a cemetery we can feel stillness and the flow of history through our bones, And we are reminded of the impermanence of just about everything.