Project 365 - Deep In The Woods

A walk in the woods often leads you to new and interesting places.  A waterfall just out of sight, foreshadowed by the joyful sound of water rushing toward bigger and better things.  A spring flower that has pushed it's way through the winter layers of leaf liter and snow to bathe in the warmth of the early spring sun.

You do not necessarily expect to stumble into a piece of forgotten family history.  But there it was, walled off and semi-cared for, the Russell family plot.

There are seven souls occupying this clearing in the woods.  The youngest is an unnamed infant in an unmarked grave.  The oldest is 50 year old John Russell.  They say that John is buried standing up.  Something about fox hunting and hearing the hounds as they beyed.

There is a bench on top of the hill where the Russell family rests.  I put my camera bag there as I changed lenses.  And when I had taken the images I came to get, after I gently closed the wooden gate and latched it tight into the notch carved into the encircling stone wall, I sat for just a moment in respectful silence for them all.