But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near . . .
-- Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"
The Covid pandemic isn't over by a long shot, but as vaccinations have increased and states allow businesses to move toward pre-pandemic in-person service levels, my photography road trips become less about respite from Covid restrictions and more about the photo opportunities that come my way. So this post -- just over a year since I began the "Covid Respite" series -- will be the last one with that title . . . I hope.
My friend, Alan, and I took off one afternoon to see if we could intercept some rainstorm clouds, but we started late and they outran us: spur-of-the-moment decisions aren't always the best; lesson learned. So we motored up NM 14 on the north end of the Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway to an old mining town called Cerrillos.
Early Native American inhabitants of the area valued the turquoise they found in the hills; in the late 19th century, silver and lead were discovered and the town boomed for about 20 years until the mines fizzled out. But the town remains, with a few buildings, a post office, a church, and -- of course -- a cemetery.
The Cerrillos cemetery is like many other small-town cemeteries in New Mexico: clean and well-tended in some parts . . .
. . . scruffy and overgrown in other parts.
Many of the gravestones bear Eastern European and Middle Eastern names -- presumably miners (or children of miners) who came to seek their fortunes.
The one below for Nick Dominovich even says "Iz Dalmacije," which means "from Dalmatia."
Of course there were also familiar Hispanic names, like Martinez and Sandoval . . .
But most interesting to me were the headstones that were clearly hand-carved by people who were not artisans . . . simple blocks of stone or concrete with lettering that did not always break logically or fit neatly within the boundaries:
(In the picture above, look closely at the end of the first line to see that the "3" of "1923" falls around the corner of the stone onto the side face.)
The inscription on the one above says
In Me-mory of Brijida
Coriz died the
Day 11 of July
at the age 21 year
the year 1909
May they all Rest in Peace.
If you would like to see these and other images in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.
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