Sinking in

Driving north on Charnock Hill Road in Rutland, Mass, you find yourself on a narrow street lined by tall pine trees so closely seeded by nature as to give you the feel you are driving down a hallway.  Houses to the right, conservation land to the left, the dipping sun narrowly filtering through the trees.  About a mile and a half up the road, on the left you'll see a set of four stone steps that lead to a little rise where Goose Hill Cemetery is. 

The ground is sinking in a uniform patter across the burial area.  Sinking in where pine boxes below have deteriorated and collapsed in on their residents and in turn the ground above them has started to sink down around their bones.  You see this sinking in and you know what it means as you step carefully through the mossy ground cover.   It is just distracting enough that if you aren't paying attention and your next step suddenly sinks down deeply into the moss, it can be startling.  Not to worry, no hands are grabbing your ankles to pull you in.  It's simply layers and layers of soft moss.  Small pine trees have self seeded themselves in the moss all over the area.

Recently I was thinking about what happens when a husband goes first or a wife goes first.  Which leads to a bigger headstone purchase, which leads to a more decorative stone purchase.  Above is a stone for Joseph Smith and three of his wives....they all went before he did.  I'm sure this just replaced their individual headstones, right?

Nearby is the stone of Calvin Smith who died at Plattsburg, NY, War of 1812, says the stone.  My high school history classes having been a long time ago and the War of 1812 even further back.  I had to look up to see how Plattsburg played its role. 

Turns out the battle at Plattsburg, also known as the Battle of Lake Champlain, was fought September 11, 1814.  So it is most likely he died two years after the date on the stone.  We've seen stones before where the carver has run out of space and as you can see in the images of this one, that there is limited space, especially when a stone is shared with others as this one is. Calvin would have been 28 when he died, if we use the date of the battle as his date of death.

On through the moss, is the grave of a younger man, just ten years and seven months old.  A finger points the way to heaven underneath the words "Loved and Early Called".  Clarence E. Birge, son of Ezra and Louisa L. Birge, died at Barre (say it Bear-ee) Nov. 12, 1865.  According to death records he died of typhoid fever.  According to the census records, at the time of his death, he would have had two younger sisters, Stella (approx. 5) and Ella (approx. 2).  In 1870, the family was living in Gardner, MA (north of his burial location in Rutland or the location in which his home states he died, Barre, MA.

This burial ground has some of the most severe lichen damage I've seen on stones.  Many fallen stones are being overcome by the mosses and appear to be pulled down into the ground with their namesakes. Damage to trees from recent year's storms is evident.  Large branches embrace some of the stones.

There were many many unreadable stones, but family names that are evident are Stone, Strong, Chickering, and Green.

Yet another aged lawyer....why do they live so long?

"An honest man is the noblest work of God."  It reads.