No Dead Ends

The Secret Life of A Cemetery

Like so many others, all eager for change, we cast ballots during the first week of early voting. Our closest polling spot is the Northwest Recreation Center which was busy that Thursday morning, but we were in-and-out in less than thirty minutes. After voting, I wandered up to a cyclone fence separating the rec center from the Austin Memorial Park Cemetery. The cemetery is a locale that we have used as a convenient turn-around spot on neighborhood walks, yet viewed from this vantage, with the grave sites far afield, I saw land free of tombstones that beckoned for a visit.

On the following Sunday, we headed to the cemetery, entering the park through its majestic gates, erected during a period when cemeteries were viewed as places of both remembrance and recreation. Once on the grounds, the tightly positioned grave sites draw your attention. The plots are primarily for well-established Austin families, with a few famous Texans interred here. A careful reading of the tombstones is a plot-by-plot outline of local and regional history. Wandering those grave sites on previous occasions, I left thinking about those who walked before us and how the history of our town is literally buried within its borders. During this visit, we veered away from the tombstones, each so full of stories, and found ourselves at the edge of a large field devoid of any marked graves. This was the space I’d viewed a few days prior.

The field offered respite from the cemetery’s reminder of our mortality. As we ventured through the grass, the light softened and the earth was alive with growth. Ground-hugging flora, such as Sensitive Plant (or Shameplant) and Frogfruit, were generously underfoot. Getting on hands and knees allowed an even fuller appreciation of the diversity of life in that modest arena.

Nearby, a dense wall of shrubs and trees bordered what we assumed was the cemetery property line. We headed for an apparent break in the foliage. We were greeted with a path heading into the wooded area.

We were pleasantly surprised by this unexpected development and wandered down the path which hugged a fence line to its north. The trail pushed into the woods and we soon noticed piles of rocks in the underbrush at intervals along the trail. Was this an old dumping ground of limestone detritus removed from grave sites a century ago? Or was this more recent and related to the construction of the Mo-Pac Expressway which usurped cemetery land back in the 1970s? The stone middens grew modestly in size the deeper we ventured. Tracks on the path indicated that the area had seen other recent visitors, yet this spot, in the center of a heavily populated neighborhood, seemed private and full of mystery. The woods exerted the magical effect of whisking one away from the known world.

At a turn in the trail, we were on the western ridge of Shoal Creek, with the sound of joggers on a path below briefly breaking the spell of isolation in the woods. We continued on to a clearing and were greeted by a “secret garden,” with late fall full-bloom Coreopsis in a patch of Prickly Pear. Here, out of the dense woods, we were reminded of the pleasure of these seemingly innocent explorations. The walks are teaching us to slow down and to take the time to let the landscape reveal its character. There is no checklist or guide save for curiosity and the willingness to be explore.

Soon past the clearing, the trail forked and we took a route re-entering the thicket. We soon came across what appears to be a small settlement, a clandestine shelter for a human inhabitant. We skirted by, not wanting to disturb anyone, and pushed through some overhanging hackberry trees towards the main cemetery grounds. Just as the light opened up above us, signaling an exit, we eyed a couple of concrete slabs in the undergrowth. These abandoned crypt covers, complete with built-in handles, seemed appropriate detritus, both creepy and mysterious.

We exited the woods close to the park entrance. A walk like this one make going out, even to places you presume to know, rewarding. As we headed towards home, we felt renewed, much like when we voted. A few days later, higher up the Balcones Escarpment, on an exposed limestone ledge, we came across a hopeful message.