Susil

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News From Mississippi

Life & Events > Silent as the Grave
 

Silent as the Grave

"Forest Lake Road" should be called "Black Pond Road" because the "lake" after which it is named is not a lake; it is a moderately big pond with the blackest water you've ever seen. You turn off highway 98, cross the railroad tracks, pass a car repair shop, and next to it is the black pond.
Keep going on Forest Lake Road, and it winds up and up to the highest point around, known to locals as "the hill." From the summit you get a Blue Ridge Mountain kind of vista, far views of the hazy blue tree horizon. The soil is mostly sand. I asked a geologist how did this hill come to be and he said in prehistoric times, great deluges of water probably from melting glaciers up north, formed this hill and deposited sand in its wake.

Right at the top of this hill is where the Forest Service is logging out trees--hundreds of acres of trees. Logging is a destructive, brutal, nasty, loud, awful business. The pines are cut; the other trees are just in the way, so machinery gouges them, slams into them, runs over them heedlessly.
It just kills me to see like I did today a beautiful poplar tree with five feet of its bark peeled back off its trunk. Its leaves fluttered gracefully in the breeze; but that tree is dead as a doornail. No tree can survive that much damage. That tree has had birds nest in it, and hawks sit in its topmost branches, and squirrels running through it, but no more.

Off to the left of the road I turned the car around, and found myself in a black graveyard. Forest Lake Road and its environs are where the black people live. Two oak trees grow in the middle of this graveyard; it is unfenced, and surrounded by woods. A wooden bench rest against one of the trees. Without the logging noises, it would have been silent here, just the wind through the trees and birdsong now and then. Silent, lonely, even.
I turned off the car and looked around. Most of the black graves had headstones, with a concrete slab over the grave.
White graves don't have the concrete slab on top.

I asked a black lady about it; she said Oh, it's just a black custom.
I had heard a long time ago a slab on top of the grave kept the haints (ghosts) from escaping. When those d*mn loggers are gone I'm gonna come back one day and listen to the silence and write some poetry--after I respectfully ask permission from the inhabitants interred there if it's okay if I visit for a while.

susil

posted on Mar 29, 2012 3:33 PM ()

Comments:

There is some new Republican thing on the state level to privatize the forest service land. Utah just passed such a bill, and there is one in the works in Colorado. It gets them a one-time payment of $137 million from the loggers that they say will help pay for education. States waste that kind of money in a single year, and then it goes into the pockets of those lawmakers' cronies for the rest of eternity.
comment by troutbend on Mar 30, 2012 11:57 AM ()
That is just horrible! The land will be torn up and desecrated. I thought the Forest Service was there to preserve and protect to forests, but selfish interests and money take precedence-- of course.
reply by susil on Apr 1, 2012 11:18 AM ()
I like peaceful little grave yards, and I will visualize ou there writing
poetry.
comment by elderjane on Mar 30, 2012 5:35 AM ()
Hi jeri; My daughter recently told me Why don't you write poetry anymore?
Inspiration has to strike is my answer.
reply by susil on Mar 30, 2012 11:08 AM ()
Well, one thing about putting a slab over the grave is that it makes it almost impossible for anyone to disturb it without heavy equipment. I will await your poetry, composed in the sweet silence of that hill.
comment by tealstar on Mar 30, 2012 4:06 AM ()
Hi teal; Yes, another person said it keeps the grave from being disturbed. I don't know. Oh yes, I intend to go back to that lonely place and compose (versus de-compose, ha ha) soon.
reply by susil on Mar 30, 2012 11:06 AM ()
Sue, when I was a pre-teen, most of the graves in the white commentaries had cement slabs on them, so when my wife died, I poured a slab over her and put the head stone on the end of it. Never heard it was a "black" tradition. I learn something new every day.
comment by larryb on Mar 29, 2012 6:21 PM ()
Hi larry; I'm not used to seeing the slab thing, except in Louisiana.
Maybe it helps to prevent sinking of the grave too.
Hope you are well.
reply by susil on Mar 30, 2012 11:02 AM ()
Many of the "hiking trails" around the Catskills are old logging roads. But most of the logging was done 70 years ago and there's no real sign of it in most cases. You have to search for old growth, but there are a few patches of that around. Trees are supposed to be a renewable resource, so I suppose the issues are complex.
comment by jjoohhnn on Mar 29, 2012 4:56 PM ()
Hi jj; Timber brings in good money, but I don't like the idea of the Forest Service logging out parts of the DeSoto National Forest for money. The forests are there to be preserved, not "managed" and used as tree farms for logging. There are private paper companies who already do that.
Years ago Camp Shelby got rights to large tracts of DeSoto National Forest to use as an artillery range. Everyone wants a piece of the forest--leave some of it inract is all I'm saying!
reply by susil on Mar 30, 2012 10:59 AM ()

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