Fisher's Cemetary, ca 1852

I have always enjoyed cemetaries. This seems odd, because I don't really understand why people choose to be buried in them - I don't want my body preserved and sealed in a box, and I don't understand using good land to park the deceased for an eternity, long past the time when anyone knows or cares that they are there. I personally want to be cremated and returned to the earth, which to me seems like the natural cycle of things. I would like to be remembered for my life, not the patch of earth I occupy in death. Nevertheless, I really enjoy cemetaries.

My second photography assignment is to take seventy two (seventy two!) pictures of ordinary things around me, but make the pictures interesting. This is actually pretty difficult, and seventy two good pictures in ten days is a lot. My teacher suggested that we just head for someplace new, a different neighborhood perhaps, where we will see things with fresh eyes.

I drove toward Vancouver on Old Evergreen Highway looking for such a place, and discovered Fisher's Cemetary. It is a humble patch of earth nestled along a narrow asphalt lane, long ago replaced by State Highway 14. It's the oldest public burying ground in Clark County, dating to 1852. You can see that life was different then. Lifespans were mostly shorter. There are double headstones for couples who's deaths were seperated by many decades, and you wonder what the surviving spouse did all those years? This wasn't an era friendly to singles; you needed a partner to share the harsh routines of daily life. There are the very large headstones, and the very small. Some lived a surprisingly long life, and many died young. Families lie grouped together. Trains rumble past and the river churns towards the sea, homes of earlier settlers hang on tenaciously while mansions with views sprout around them, and the cemetary is unchanging, telling the stories of a century ago. Some of these headstones are adorned with plastic flowers, whirligigs, small flags. Who still remembers these deceased? And for how much longer?