On my way in to work yesterday, I stopped and found a geocache. It was located on land that once was a State Hospital. The land has now been appropriated for housing, among other things. It is a cookie-cutter community. Every house the same, all the mailboxes match, so sweet. There are still a few foundations and reminders that something else once occupied these grounds, if you look hard.
One of the remnants is a cemetery where the patients of the facility were buried if they didn’t have family members to take their remains. It is a sad location, hidden by weeds and trees. The only mention of these people is a small cement block with a number on top of it. No names, no dates, just a number. The stones are laid out in long lines, one after another, unseen unless you are looking for them. You could be standing beside them and not even realize it. Mother Nature is very good at taking back what is hers!
A year or so ago, the local government cleaned out the woods, cutting back the vines and saplings and exposed the graves. Unfortunately this needs to be done yearly. There is a stone marker at the edge of the woods with the name of the cemetery on it and the dates the patients were buried there. A small path leads into the brush, taking you to the final resting place of these poor individuals.
The cache was near-by, another grave hidden in the woods. This patient had been buried where Rt79 was going to be built and before construction could continue, the grave needed to be moved. It was placed a few hundred yards away from the busy highway and over the years, this gravestone was covered by the brush and lays forgotten. A geocache has been placed near-by and it brings some hardy adventurers (well, not really) to his grave and brings him to mind for awhile. Gone but not forgotten.
After I stopped by his grave site I continued on to another near-by site I had wanted to visit. Driving south on Rt79, I daily pass a wetlands, a depression beside the highway where at one time a power plant for the State Hospital once stood. All that remains is a towering smoke stack and a few walls built into the hillside. Months ago a local artist had painted a Covid germ on one of the walls. I’d see it as I drove by and wanted to get a picture of it before it disappeared. Since I still had time before I had to be at work, I took a walk down to the site.
There is a gravel road that goes down to where the power plant once stood. High weeds grow on either side of it and are valiantly trying to take over the road. Butterflies and grasshoppers flew around me as I walked down the uneven path. The road drops into a bowl beside the highway and the housing plan situated on the other side. The area is a wetlands, a stand of dead trees sits in a watery plot, I often see hawks sitting on their branches, keeping an eye out for something to eat.
Coming
down the trail I came across a sheet of paper. I picked it up and found that it
was a satellite picture of the area with notations printed on it. It was a plan
for a road to be put in leading to the far side of the depression where a new
billboard would be built. Since this area is a wetlands, an environmental study
had to be done before any construction could be started. This paper, which had
been laying on the road for awhile showed where they planned on building roads to access the site.
I was thinking, just what we need, another billboard along this highway. No doubt it will be an electronic one, flashing its lights out to the road. I remember when Johnson was president, oh so long ago, how his wife, Lady Bird, instituted a program to clean-up the roadsides of America. (The Highway Beautification Act) It cleaned up all the ugly signs which littered the highways among other things. Sadly, advertisers only built larger signs further away from the roads and now with the wonders of electronics, we have huge billboards which flash their various messages to us as we zip by. Usually without giving a person time to fully read their message.
Driving home at night I see them all along the various roads I frequent. A few are turned off at midnight but most shine on through the early morning. I find it so refreshing to drive along back roads that are free of signs, free of commercialism, nothing to see except the beauty of nature, the trees, pastures, farms and lakes.
Looking at the map I found, I couldn’t help but think of Edward Abbey. In his book Desert Solitaire he wrote about his time working for the Federal Government in Arches National Monument. The park was wilderness, desert without any paved roads. Surveyors came and put stakes in to mark where roads would be bulldozed and paved. This would allow cars and campers filled with people who just wanted to get a quick snapshot of the scenery and maybe a visit to the john and something to eat at the refreshment stand. He felt as if people should work to see these wonders, he wanted to avoid the commercialism of the parks. So, he went out at night and pulled all the stakes out.
The roads were still built and the tourists came but he had that one night of feeling as if he helped stop them. He went on to write The Monkey Wrench Gang, a work of fiction which promoted sabotage to protest against things which harmed the environment.
Now don’t get the idea that I might do anything this drastic. My extremes are writing about how it upsets me to see another bright electronic sign standing alongside my ride to work. Commercialism, that’s what runs our world, what can we do about it? I’m just happy that I can still find places that are free from it.
Now the question is, how long will they remain there for us to see…
