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Offerings
Today marks the beginning the Latin American celebration Día de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. It is a popular holiday in Mexico and is becoming increasingly popular in the American Southwest, too. (Here’s a good source of information on the tradition.)
Here in Lubbock, several art galleries participate in an event called Procesíon, with exhibits reflecting the cultural heritage and modern interpretations of the holiday. The Buddy Holly Center hosts workshops, and tomorrow my granddaughter and I are headed over to make sugar skulls, which is our traditional after-Halloween activity.
And, meanwhile, one winter day several months after the celebration, in a niche on the back of the cemetery gates in Terlingua, I spotted some relics of Day of the Dead.
Terlingua Cemetery
Terlingua, Texas
photographed 1.20.2013
(I am gone for a while, and will not be responding to comments right away. But make some anyway, if you feel inclined, and I’ll get back to you – it just won’t be right away.)
There are many mysteries
This cemetery is especially stark, with that jumble of mostly unmarked wooden crosses and piles of rock marking gravesites. It’s hot – so hot that candles melt, leaving greasy marks on the rocks. Many of the graves are those of miners, who succumbed to the occupational hazards in nearby mercury mines, which began production in 1903. Other graves are from the influenza epidemic of 1918-19. And still others are recent. They are crowded together (the complete site is only about an acre) and it’s easy to get scratches from mesquite trees or poked by cactus thorns.
But it is also especially beautiful, with a view across to the Chisos Mountains and Big Bend National Park and that half moon, one week away from the first full moon of the year, hanging in the sky.
Terlingua Cemetery
Terlingua, Texas
photographed 1.20.2013
(I am gone for a while, and will not be responding to comments right away. But make some anyway, if you feel inclined, and I’ll get back to you – it just won’t be right away.)
The dregs of dreams, 3
Weathered wooden cross stuck in hard ground, sad offerings beneath them.
Most of the graves are unmarked. Many of the dead buried here were victims of accidents in the nearby mercury mines, which were active in the early 1900s. Others were victims of the 1918-1919 flu epidemic.
Many of the graves have offerings – a vase, a candle, a flag, a letter, a handful of coins – which only amplify the mysteries.
Terlingua, Texas
photographed 1.20.2013
The dregs of dreams, 2
More dregs, more dreams.
The walls of this structure are slowly returning to the hard earth from which they came. Literally: the walls are made from adobe, an ancient building method that’s still in use. It’s sustainable – the ingredients are clay, sand, dirt, water, and some sort of organic material (straw, usually.) It doesn’t require any specialized tools. Adobe walls are load-bearing a,nd have good thermal properties. With the proper covering (plaster, or whitewash) adobe walls can last a long time.
Adobe won’t last once that outer covering is gone, and melts away.
In a desert that takes a while, but it still happens.
Terlingua, Texas
photographed 1.20.2013
The dregs of dreams, 1
The road from Alpine to Terlingua goes through mountains, past a border patrol checkpoint, and across a wide plain. And then, just as the mountains of Big Bend National Park loom off to the left, there are a few scattered and abandoned buildings: evaporated dreams.
But the dregs of these dreams are stunningly beautiful.
along Highway 118
Brewster County, Texas
photographed 1.20.2013
One Day | One Image 