For Halloween, I took a walk in the graveyard, on a grey sky kind of day.
Sunset Memorial Park is a hilltop cemetery in my hometown of Hoquiam, Wash.
The hill is terraced by the blacktop lane that loops through the different sections. The earlier graves are found in the lower reaches (out of frame, below), near the erosion line. In some places the old graves threaten to fall into the woods that ring the bottom of the hill.
I always leave the blacktop and hunt around along the edges, enchanted by the thought of lives lived in distant times.
This guy died the year after I was born. Imagine what he saw, growing up in the '40s, and fighting in Korea.
I took a few shots in this area between the blacktop and the woods, looking for the perfect, gloomy Halloween pic.
A ghostly image appeared through the trees.
Of course it only looks ghostly in the photo, and I did a bit of editing to emphasize that appearance. On the day, my eyes saw it clearly, and I knew it was the monument marking the burial sites of one of Hoquiam's prominent families, the Lamb family.
The pagoda is merely ornamental, I believe. There is no marker with a name or dates suggesting it's a grave. There's a story behind its placement there, I'm sure, but so far I haven't discovered it.
The sepia building is the old Hoquiam city mausoleum, built in 1919.
It's very quiet in there.
This evergreen pair had a surreal luminescence.
After shooting around the mausoleum, I hiked up to the top of the hill.
And looked back at the old mausoleum and the new one, built in 1990.
From the very top, you can catch a glimpse of the Grays Harbor bay.
The orange of the trees hinted at Halloween.
Now on the far side of the hill, I headed back down to the gate, to get the shot that began this post. I wanted to find a few good photos to give a sense of the location as a whole. After photographing the entrance, I headed back up to see what other vantage points I could find.
And that's when I encountered the twins.
They were nibbling on the pair of wreaths adorning a fresh gravesite, at first, and seemed unperturbed by my approach.
One of them was as curious about me as I was about her.
She slowly made her way over to me.
To say hello before scampering off to join her friend.
