"...where the dead live closer than they did in life, the stones close./ So much encircled love!"
--"Baltics" by Swedish 2011 Nobel laureate Tomas Transtroner, translated by Patty Crane

Vermont's townships of the dead range from city-sized expanses to tiny former homestead plots. In farming country, they are often situated in high places; a cynic would say the old-timers used the land least suitable for farming, but those who worked so hard on those farms would probably have seen the wisdom of such a practice. To me, they resemble the one in a play that high schools used to put on a lot--my father, an English teacher, directed it once--Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." In any case, the cemeteries can inspire reverence, thoughtfulness, respect, even laughter. While I'm still not in one, I try to visit them, camera in hand.