Tag: Tree

  • Today’s Sketchbook Drawing

    A sketch of the local park. Crayons, pencil, markers on paper.

  • Small Country Cemetery

    This weekend, the family and I, including the dog, started up hiking again. This is our third year, and I have mentioned it before, I am really looking forward to it. As New Yorkers, getting to the location of our hikes is half the battle. On average, we have to dive about 45 minutes out of the City, before we can hit some more rugged nature trails, and if we want to try our hand at more moderately difficult paths that are less trafficked, then we have to go an hour to an hour and a half away.

    Such was the case this weekend. We had decided to hit up Mountain Lakes Park in Westchester County, right on the New York/Connecticut border. This was our first time out there, and Google Maps ended up failing us. The app said we had arrived, but we were in the middle of a country road, surrounded by horse farms and BMW’s. So, I pulled the car over to the first public parking space I could find, which ended up being a cemetery off of June Road and 116.

    After I had figured out that we were like five minutes away from our destination, the wife suggested that we stroll through the cemetery; see what we can see. As far as I could tell, people were buried there from the 1780 to the present day. Quite a few Revolutionary War Veterans were there, from the 4th New York Militia. My seven-year-old daughter, who is very curious and inquisitive, had lots of questions for us. Why were so many people with the same name buried together? Do you have to be buried together if you are married? And sadly, she observed that many of the graves were for children, and wanted to know why so many kids died long ago? All good and honest questions that I would expect her to ask.

    Because families used to always live near each other, and married people normally want to be with each other forever, and sadly, medicine wasn’t that advanced long ago, and kids who got sick would sometimes die.

    But the kid kept asking us if we, me and the wife, wanted to be buried together. “I guess,” was my answer, not because I’m unsure we should spend eternity together, but because we never talked about it.

    The wife wants to be eco-buried so she can be plant food for a tree. I can live with that.

    I want to be buried someplace quiet and just have a boulder for a headstone. Like Jackson Pollock did. Only my name on it.

    We decided that whomever dies first, that their wishes should be honored, and the other one has to do the same.

    Seems fair. Either a tree or a boulder.

    Very Taoist in a sense.