After spending a peaceful morning exploring the woods around Purgatory Falls I had decided to continue my adventuring by finding a bunch of Tiny Free Libraries in the area but as I was doing this I kept getting distracted by cemeteries. There’s nothing more alluring to me than an old cemetery deep in the forest and there seemed to be a great deal of them today. After behaving myself and passing three I finally relented when I saw the Laurel Hill Cemetery.
It had a sweet little historical marker out front and a very inviting driveway. I drove in and just like the nearby Vale End Cemetery I’d explored not long ago there was signs about opening hours and rules. No planting of anything in the ground. OK OK, I get it. And I must say for a New England cemetery it was really well plotted out. Everything was on a perfect grid, the roads were nice and straight and clean, the stones themselves were very evenly and amply spaced out, and even weirder this whole place was on flat ground without a hill or weird nook in sight. In the back there seemed to be equipment for a full time groundskeeper and the lawn was immaculately mowed. Everything was in it’s place. It was downright orderly. Of course, to a chaotic individual such as myself this made it uncomfortably creepy.
Most of the stones seemed to date around the late 1800s and were marble. Nothing particularly outstanding until I spotted the only tree in the cemetery itself. It had red on it which attracted me to it. Was it flowers? No, this tree actually turned out to be an apple tree with heritage apples the size of cherries. I ate one to prove this theory to myself and it was crazy sour but definitely an apple!
I milled about for a while and tried to ask Find a Grave if there was anyone of note buried here but my reception wasn’t working. I’d only find out later that Rod Price the founding member and guitarist for Foghat was buried here having died unexpectedly in 2009 after a fall down the stairs. I didn’t even know he lived in the area… as such I had to borrow this image (I’ll try to take my own later.) It is a pretty monument!
