Gravestones

Snow shapes the landscape.  Today, most of the fields are perfectly smooth, their stubble covered in the deeper snow.  Anything that sticks up is likewise covered with its own cap of snow – a bush, dried flowers, fence posts, a mailbox.  The lines of snow draw your eyes to the horizontals, to the roof lines especially, where icicles now hang in great numbers. And today, each gravestone at St. Mary’s Cemetery had its cap of snow, each cross had three snow piles.  I had noticed the cemetery driving by it each day on the way to and from Cooperstown, but today, the snow covered stones gave me pause.  It’s a small cemetery, close to the road, with a locked gate.  There’s nothing especially beautiful or peaceful about it.  The stones closest to the road look fairly new, but I wonder about the ones further back.

I think it was David Brooks who wrote about somewhere people and anywhere people.  The anywhere people have the education and skills and sense of personal freedom to live anywhere, to take a job in Houston or Toronto or Dubai. The somewhere people are more rooted to the place they were born, sometimes by education and skills, and sometimes by values and preference. A lot of people in this part of the state live where their ancestors are buried. Dan is the fourth generation, at least, in Hartwick.  His connections are wide and deep.  He knows people, their histories, their character, their family connections; and they know him.  Few people live anonymously here.

There will be deeper snow tomorrow. We are expecting a storm, and you can feel it everywhere in town.  People are talking about things they won’t do tomorrow, and the parking lot at the Price Chopper is unusually full at mid day. There is a kind of hum of expectation, of preparation. They know what a storm means.