3 Cemeteries in Vermont
February 19, 2019
My only full day in Vermont would be full of trudging about in the snow… which is the only way to do Vermont in the winter. After staying in Barre overnight, I took advantage of my locale by throwing in a early morning stop at a unique tourist attraction, Barre’s Hope Cemetery before heading west. But first, an almond milk latte.
For a little background, the industrial town’s draw is granite, Barre grey granite to be more precise. With a couple of neat looking quarries about town, granite is a tourist draw. The area’s granite is the crème de la crème of the granite world and the main raw material for granite giant of the funerary monument world, Rock of Ages. Though granite is found out and about the city’s downtown, nowhere has more stylized granite than Hope Cemetery, the final resting place of a bunch of wisenheimers.
Fortunately the roadways circling the cemetery were sort of plowed. It was like driving an amusement park car along a track as it slips and grips the packed snow in between high hills of snow drift. (read: fun!) Also fortunately, it was totally doable by car, unlike my next stop/yesterday’s stop Green Mount Cemetery. But unfortunately, the snow was likely covering a ton of funny monuments. Here are some ones I caught.
Yes, that’s a snowboard.
😄 / 😔
This was my favorite, The Bored Angel.
Now. I decided to go back to Green Mount Cemetery in Montpelier. I know, I know. But I saw that I missed this amazing monument called Pieta, or “pity” in Italian. And I knew I’d regret not heading back in to give it the old college try despite the hills and deep snow. More of the roads were plowed on this second visit, but there was still no clear way of knowing how to scale the large central hill. Pieta was somewhere, but where? I’d have to take a leap of faith and set out on foot not knowing where the snow-buried paths were. The things I do for the things I like.
I knew Pieta had a large reddish slab of a backdrop, but zooms of all my pictures yesterday gave me no leads. Given its beauty, I thought maybe it’d be up on top of the hill. But it wasn’t. Several false turns and many knee-deep sinks into snow, I finally found the red slab. Unfortunately the striking monument was covered in snow. But it felt good not to have had to give up. So here, my pictures of Pieta.
I wanted to lovingly clear it of its snow. But I never touch the monuments. They honor the dead. And I honor their honor. I’ll just have to come back in the Fall.
Oh hello again.
My last cemetery is a bit of a joke. The Flavor Graveyard at the Ben & Jerry’s Factory. Now who is the wisenheimer? A quick walk would reveal the failed flavors of Ben & Jerry’s past.
Since Ben & Jerry’s has so many non-dairy flavors, I decided I would go check out their factory while so close by. And if I found that their tour highlights some of the non-dairy process, well then I’d partake. But it was swarmed with adolescents on a trip. And the last thing a middle school teacher wants to see during her break is adolescents.
Schweddy Balls flavor didn’t work out? I wonder why.
That’s enough dead stuff in Vermont. Next up, what I ate.