While all the hip college kids are spending their Spring Breaks partying it up in Cancun and the DR, we adults have traveled to a land even colder than where we came from: Maine. The hubs and I are here to visit his grandmother, and while I do love a good sprawl on the beach with an adult beverage by my side, I also love the winter. In Maine there is actual snow! My snow-loving side has been deprived all season in DC, and it is finally getting the satisfying crunch of snow piles beneath my boots. I think I'm in love. It's serious.
We are staying in a small town called Skowhegan, about an hour from Bangor. There is not much to do, but there are lots of lovely sprawling fields covered in snow, so I have loved just absorbing our surroundings. On the drive here, in between the snow-covered fields and quirky shops, we happened to pass a tiny cemetery, and I pleaded with the hubs to turn around so we could visit it. Is that totally creepy, or do others also get a little thrill when they see those crumbling headstones from over a century ago? I think it's the sense of history and the solemn quiet of cemeteries that I love so much, or maybe the sadness of the weather-beaten headstones whose messages are so faint that they seem no more than a whisper. Either way, I think they can be exceptionally beautiful places.
I would have loved to spend more time there, but with family members to pick up at the airport, I was only able to indulge for a few quick moments. As I crunched through the snow reading the names on the headstones, I was so moved by how old the cemetery was. Some of the dates I could make out were from the 1870s. Imagining those people's lives at such a different time was bittersweet, and I would have easily lost myself in nostalgia for times I never knew had I been able to walk amongst the stones for longer. As it was, it was an oddly nice way to steal a few moments of solitude on a cold winter afternoon in Maine.
