Place 2: Paths and Fog

Homewood Cemetery, 7:15 a.m.

The trees and tombstones were wreathed in mist this morning. I try not to have expectations about that kind of thing, but it surprised me. I have to admit that it made me uneasy. Why should the rest of the city be clear in the post-dawn, while this graveyard was shrouded in fog?

I had to get up 5:30 to bring a friend to the train station dahntahn. Driving back I remembered the Gettysburg fog. The civil war town is set in a hollow; in the winter, wind whips through with surprising speed and force; in the autumn and early spring, fog settles among the buildings and monuments. The library is open 24 hours - I spent many long nights there before final exams, and would often emerge before dawn, cup of tea in hand, into a scene out of 19th century England. Layers of fog like stretched blue cotton candy wound themselves around the familiar academic buildings and streetlights, making it impossible to discern the sunrise. Driving back to Greenfield, I saw mist rising from the surface of the Monongahela and thought, momentarily, of those early Gettysburg mornings.

Homewood is not, to my knowledge, in a hollow (anyone have some topo maps?) yet the fog was eerily present. I had wanted to stop there and determine for sure which way was east, and I figured I might as well go since I was already up. I stopped at Homewood before heading to campus earlier this week but I was so rushed that I couldn't center myself - I couldn't grasp the place I was in, why I was there, and how it had changed since last week. I got a cup of coffee and figured I would sit in the grass and drink it slowly, gradually waking up, enjoying the early peace before the sun was too hot and the air too heavy.

But the fog. When I turned into the cemetery I immediately decided that I would not leave the road. Like Harry in the Forbidden Forest, Bilbo and the dwarves traveling through Mirkwood, like Hansel and Gretel, I felt as though I had been warned - don't leave the path. Instead, I sat on the hood of my car, crossed my arms over my chest, and warily tried to take in my surroundings. I imagined the birds and chipmunks scoffing at me, and in my mind I argued with them, "Hey, you don't have several millenia of recorded history that teaches you to fear the dead." I'm not sure if I believe in these things or not (you could say I'm open to the possibility), but why wouldn't a graveyard be just as good a place for a "veil" between the living world and the dead world as any other? What if robins and crickets are used to the imprints of our departed ancestors roaming the land and, experiencing it since birth, act no differently in a graveyard than anywhere else?

Of course, it's far more likely that a feature of the landscape caused the morning fog, that the robins are concerned primarily with foraging for food, and that my reluctance to leave the safety of the road and walk amongst the dead spawned from an overactive imagination and years of spooky stories that have left an indelible mark upon my mind. I accept this. I know I was being ridiculous today.

From the road, I saw more leaves had fallen since last week. Birds flitted like ghosts between the misted tree branches. I could hear them clearly enough, but all I saw was a flapping wing here, trailing tailfeathers there. I finished my coffee and got back in the car. Time to go.

Driving through the tombstones on my way out, I noticed that the sun was higher and starting to burn through the mist. As I came around a bend, a squirrel grabbed a fallen nut from the road and scurried for cover. The tree from which the fruit had falled was a horse chestnut. Its short stature belied the age implied by the tree's thick, gnarled trunk. I stopped the car. The tree's leaves splayed in clusters of five, like a hand with outstretched fingers. The leaves were brown along the central vein, yellow out toward the edges - clearly this tree was done it's work for the summer and ready for colder times. On the tree's trunk, however, was a healthy growth of English ivy, still green. I could tell, even at half past seven, that the day would be too warm to be considered a true autumn day.

Homewood this morning was in limbo, in many different ways.