Sunday, October 30, 2011

Halloween: A Little Tour Of A Cemetery

This weekend, to take a break from grading papers, I went for a walk in a cemetery I'd never visited before.  I'd passed it numerous times, and even glancing through the fence I could tell it wasn't your usual Utah cemetery with all-flat gravemarkers that make life easier for lawnmowing crews.  No, this cemetery was filled with the less-usual.
Some markers looked rather European in style:

(Note: I have not tampered with the color on any of these; the sky really looks like this in October in Utah.)


And lots of the markers had Greek names on them, but I took far too many photos to post all of them.
A few of the markers were clearly NOT European:

There were many huge, pretentious markers, some that were decorated to the point where there appeared to be no sense of dignity left for the dead, and one that I found mystifyingly tacky:
So, some guy who really, really likes athletic lettering styles buried his two wives (this is Utah, so they might be simultaneous wives and not merely successive wives) under a four-foot granite letter?  Okaaaay, then.  Wow.  I wonder how the folks at the gravestone company kept straight faces while discussing this order.

This cemetery even had crypts!  (Not common at all in Utah.)


And while I was photographing several crypts, my eye caught a twitch of movement beyond one of them.  Yes, I was being watched.  In a graveyard.
But it wasn't anything spooky; it was a couple of mule deer.

We stood and stared at each other for a couple of minutes, and then the deer casually walked away.  But as I went up the hill, I found they had a few friends over:

(Look in the background by the fence.)
There must've been about 35 does and half-grown fawns grazing rather unconcernedly in the cemetery.  (I didn't see any antlers, so I'm assuming no bucks were present.  Maybe this was girls' night out or something.)
Anyway, it was an interesting little tour, and I took about 100 shots in all.  (Max would've taken at least 700 in the same place, I'm sure.)

3 comments:

  1. 700 easy! Thanks for inviting me and I wish I hadn't been working tonight, you got some great pictures there. Love the "A", he'd better hope he's not eternally married to them, or they're going to be giving him grief for a long, long time. The deer are way cool, especially that one that is looking right at you.
    We'll have to go again another day.

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  2. I find cemetery grave stones fascinating, too. Great set of photos. We always try to catch a glimpse of the deer when we drive past the cemetery, and see them at least half the time.

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  3. I love graveyard photos and you did a marvelous job. Loved the deer shots. I live in the boonies outside of Arlanta and have white tail deer visit our yard. but mule deer are so kmuch more impressive. I remembrt them from when I lived in Utah. In spite of or maybe because of all the hunting in Utah they still display a remarkable desire to be around people. My daughter has many pictures of them on campus at BYU.
    Thanks for sharing such great photos and insights.
    Johnina

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