Aug 20 24
The Ashwan cemetery is bordered on its north and west sides by almond orchards; a long, dark field of corn runs along its southern edge — and to the east, a rough two lane highway — just beyond which is a forest typified by cottonwoods and sycamores. There are no structures to speak of except a modest grey brick caretaker’s shack, and across the highway a slowly decomposing shop with a sign that faintly reads, “Stained Glass Junction.”
The Ashwan cemetery is neither particularly old nor particularly popular; the oldest grave being from around 1840. People are still being buried here — though maybe only one or so a month. A lot of families prefer to bury their dead in the Guénon cemetery, about 10 miles south; it sits on a bluff overlooking the Guénon wash, a vast angled plain of manzanita and chamise, dotted with black oaks.
Besides Guénon being more typically picturesque, we’ve always assumed that it was the darkness at Ashwan that turned people away — and the sheep.
For just under a century and a half Ashwan shepherds have had an easement to the cemetery and any unplanted grass fields in the township. Since there isn’t much of the latter, the cemetery is one of the sheep’s main places for grazing.
The cemetery’s dimness is caused by the flourishing of about forty ponderosa pines; their presence makes it feel like it’s always dusk (except of course at night). Nothing grows in their shadows except fine fescue-type grass.
The white and gray marble headstones are blotched significantly with pale green blooms of xanthoparmelia lichen and are mostly askew due to the ponderosa’s many surface roots.
We are seated on a large, flat ledger stone. It is August so everything is bursting green. We are sipping some water from a little blue plastic cup kindly given to us by the caretaker. We are absently looking east through the choppy white stones and broad trunks into the gently swaying darkness of the forest beyond. The only sounds besides the recent blast of a distant freight’s airhorn and the periodic raspy thuds of a shovel hitting dirt, is a light breeze rustling the corn and swishing the pines, and the little, incessant tearing sounds of teeth pulling and chewing small blades of grass.
The Ashwan cemetery is neither particularly old nor particularly popular; the oldest grave being from around 1840. People are still being buried here — though maybe only one or so a month. A lot of families prefer to bury their dead in the Guénon cemetery, about 10 miles south; it sits on a bluff overlooking the Guénon wash, a vast angled plain of manzanita and chamise, dotted with black oaks.
Besides Guénon being more typically picturesque, we’ve always assumed that it was the darkness at Ashwan that turned people away — and the sheep.
For just under a century and a half Ashwan shepherds have had an easement to the cemetery and any unplanted grass fields in the township. Since there isn’t much of the latter, the cemetery is one of the sheep’s main places for grazing.
The cemetery’s dimness is caused by the flourishing of about forty ponderosa pines; their presence makes it feel like it’s always dusk (except of course at night). Nothing grows in their shadows except fine fescue-type grass.
The white and gray marble headstones are blotched significantly with pale green blooms of xanthoparmelia lichen and are mostly askew due to the ponderosa’s many surface roots.
We are seated on a large, flat ledger stone. It is August so everything is bursting green. We are sipping some water from a little blue plastic cup kindly given to us by the caretaker. We are absently looking east through the choppy white stones and broad trunks into the gently swaying darkness of the forest beyond. The only sounds besides the recent blast of a distant freight’s airhorn and the periodic raspy thuds of a shovel hitting dirt, is a light breeze rustling the corn and swishing the pines, and the little, incessant tearing sounds of teeth pulling and chewing small blades of grass.