Blog Archives

room to make the big mistakes

“There’s nothing to see.”

“It’s so flat.”

“It’s boring.”

“The openness is weird.”

(All incorrect statements about the Plains.)

Hollene Cemetery
Hollene,  New Mexico

photographed 8.31.2025

gate-implied fence

I can’t really decide if the presence of the gate implies a fence or if it’s the other way around. Or if it even matters.

But besides that philosophical situation, here’s a photo that captures the entirety of the town of Inez, New Mexico.

Inez, New Mexico
photographed 8.17.2025

one-half mile

The cemetery was about knee-high in weeds and it’s both snake territory and snake season, so I didn’t walk around. But from what I could see, the number of headstones on the sign is roughly equivalent to the number of graves in the cemetery.

Fun fact: the town and the town’s cemetery are spelled differently.

Roosevelt County, New Mexico
photographed 8.17.2025

franky

There is something heartbreaking and endearing about homemade cemetery markers, and I have never seen a fancy granite (or whatever) carved stone that I liked even a little bit.

And I am sorry for the loss that Franky’s family experienced.

unnamed cemetery
Cedar Crest, New Mexico
photographed 7.1.2016

no trash!!

This was the second creepiest cemetery I’ve been to.

What happened is that my traveling companions and I parked down the hill from the cemetery and left our truck unlocked while we walked around the place. All three of us had a uneasy feeling and one of us (it was me) got weepy at the sight of a grave that was marked by a jar of rocks and cross of wire with a chunk of glass in it.

All at once, it seemed like time to leave.

And when we got back to the truck, someone had lowered the tailgate. We didn’t do it before we walked up the hill. And we didn’t see anyone at all nearby.

So then it really seemed like a good time to leave…quickly.

Redford, Texas
photographed 2.19.2025

(The creepiest cemetery? Oh, that’s in Memphis, just off Elvis Presley Boulevard, a totally murdery-feeling place called Mt. Carmel Cemetery. Yikes.)