Category Archives: Birch Lake

This spider was as curious about us as we were about her.

Last Sunday my daughters Demarée and Paige and I went to the Birch Lake Cemetery in Michigan.  It is an old cemetery that was built by now-vanished Quaker meeting house.  The meeting house was also a stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War.  The cemetery is not too large, but it is well-kept and still in use for burials today.  The earliest graves are from before the war, with a few individuals born in the mid-1700s.

Spider getting ready for fall on top of a gravestone - 9/19/2010

Cemeteries always give me a strong sense of American history, as it was lived by the people who spread out across the country to build and farm and pursue their own dreams. They also give me a strong sense of the fragility of life, especially when I am confronted with little creatures such as this spider, who literally leaped at the camera lens a couple times, trying to defend himself.  Even in a place where dead people are, life goes on, and is even celebrated.