The groundskeeper was chatty, happy to have live people to talk to. He told us which graves marked members of the Oddfellows, where the town’s founder was buried, where the Masonic section was (“from here to that oak tree”), that he has a book on symbols of Victorian grave markers, that the doe we saw has had twin fawns three years in a row, and that sometimes the deer steal the plastic flowers on the graves.

detail, gravemarker
Weaverville, California

photographed 8.3.2012