(snip) After looking at names and recognizing a couple from the local road names in the empty town we started back to the car. There was huge a Monterey Pine growing by itself with no other trees around it. I thought it was odd, so I went up to it and looked at some of the large exposed roots. There was something white embbeded in the eastern side of the root system. It was a piece of marble that had been broken long ago. Just under it was another stone, not marble, maybe heavily weathered composite cement of some sort. I suddenly recognized what these two pieces that seemed to be pulled up into the roots and mostly grown into the base of the huge trunk were. They were the remainder of a small grave stone, the same size as those of the other children's graves.
I was struck dumb. Some one had buried their child there and had probably planted a little pine sapling next to it, as a sentimental gesture. Over more than a century, the tree had grown,and it was now a huge, massive tree that could be seen from the distant roadway more than a mile away. It had completely overgrown the grave, its stone and little ground setting, and continued to grow until these stones were incorporated into the lowest reaches of the trunk's embrace. Far from the prettiness of the original thought, it was now some thing almost virulent and rank, almost horrifying, and yet magnificent. (snip) *****************************************************
"Once the grave is filled in, acorns are to be scatted over it, so that in time the grave is again overgrown, and when the undergrowth is grown as it was before, the traces of my grave will vanish from the face of the earth as I like to think memory of me will be effaced from men's minds, save for the tiny band of those who were kind enough to be fond of me to the end and of whom I carry a very warm memory to the grave."
from the Marquis de Sade's Will. He died on December 2, 1814 at the age of 74.
Regards, Mike B)
Watch the communist manifestoon! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1oGIffyVVk
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