A Drizzly Walk

I went for a walk this morning down past the cemetery. It was raining very lightly. I walked on the gravel shoulder, cut through the cemetery, and down a gravel road a ways until I turned back.

While I was in the cemetery, a truck pulled over on the opposite corner. My first thought was that they were stopping to ask me what I was doing. Walking is not normal here. I've never seen anyone else without a vehicle. Occasionally a bicycle, yes. But not on foot. And I have been asked what I was doing while walking before.

Then I thought they were going to go out in the bean field. I'd seen people out in that bean field before. But they probably wouldn't go out in the rain.

He didn't go out in the field. Turns out he had to take a leak, and he didn't see me there at ALL. At that point, I didn't want him to see me and think I was watching him. I also, in fact, did not want to watch that, so I went to the other side of the cemetery and took a photo of this impossible monument:

I guess the takeaway here is never assume you can't be seen just because you appear to be in the middle of nowhere, out in the country. People comment to me all the time that they saw my riding my bike. I may never see a soul from my bike, but evidently, there are people watching from behind the curtains as I pass by.

The cemetery has been here since at least the late 1800's. It sits between Middle Silver Creek to the west and Silver Creek to the east towards Hancock. Silver Creek church owns and maintains the grounds. Some of the stones are written in German. Many of the older graves belong to ancestors of families still living in the community here.

Rose hips

Prairie rose grows along the gravel road by the cemetery. Most of the ones I'd seen blooming earlier this year were mowed over, but there were big bushes of them carrying plump red rose hips in the ditches.