majestic oaks, the serenity of its everchanging marshes hold me spellbound. 
One of my favorite places is downtown Savannah.I could spend years wandering the tree-lined squares of this colonial city, especially as seasons change. It is considered to be an urban forest, with tall trees offering shade to those who live, work, worship, and visit. While some might be disturbed by the palpable feel of souls who seem to still populate the town decades and centuries after their deaths, I find in it a sense of connection to a place that was central to our nation's beginnings.
There are so many places that I love.....
City Market with its many galleries and horse drawn carraiges....
First African Baptist Church, built by slaves, and respite for others who were worn and tired as they traversed the Underground railroad seeking freedom....
Steeples and colonial homes, both stately and demure....
Miles and miles of wrought iron gates and cobblestones....There is strange appeal to the history of Colonial Cemetery, a place that outdates the famed Bonaventure by many years. Sitting between a historical firehouse and an aged police headquarters, you can walk directly into the city's past. As you wander through it, you can see where bored soldiers altered dates on grave markers with their pocket knives during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. The place was at one point a wintry camp for calvary, and at another was a holding place for prisoners of war.
Above ground crypts are a strange mixture of red brick and concrete, the latter added to repair walls that were ripped out during cold winters by frigid soldiers. Yellow fever wiped out huge numbers during various periods in the city's 18th and 19th century history, which meant that some crypts became mass graves. Family plots are cordoned off by iron or brick fences and walls. Markers list the names of those who mourned as well as dates of birth and death. Once in southern tradition it seems, obituaries of a sort were carved directly into granite and marble. Much of these words are now worn and difficult to decipher.
As time passed, the cemetery became a relic, and fell into disrepair. Many stones were broken off, leaving unmarked the resting places of person's who had been much loved by another since claimed by time. The city even chose to pave directly over the graves of some persons in order to advance a main road from downtown Savannah to its much newer Southside. (There is an entire Jewish cemetery hidden under asphalt a few blocks away.) As I traverse the sidewalk where these graves once stood, I can not help but feel that in someway I am a visitor in a place that should be sacred. I may live in 2009 with parking meters and paved roads next to me, but this is a place that still exists in another time.
Within the last century, the site has been turned into a historical park. Many of the markers once strewn about with abandon have been set into a red brick wall at the back of the cemetery. Fathers, wives, and children claimed in a time of archaic medical means, business men and immigrants who lost their lives while far from home, even sailors and at least one pirate are memorialized in this place. Button Gwinnett, signer of the Declaration of Independence is thought to be buried withing sight of that wall.
I have seen people walk dogs and throw Frisbees through the park's more open spaces. I once spied a vagrant taking a nap amidst thick bushes in the summer's heat. I've also been told that Colonial Cemetery is locked at night due to evidence of a moonlit Voodoo ritual occurring as recently as 2000. Some tourists have claimed to feel a sudden coolness
in the air as they snapped shots of strange vapors floating in the middle of the day.
I am mesmerized by the place. While a large part of me wants to remain cynical, and state that the city is not haunted by a multitude of lost souls, I can not deny that it is hard to feel a real sense of solitude here. It is almost as if the humid air of this place, and of all of the the South that holds my heart, is too thick for the memories of those who breathe it in to fade away and allow real time to completely take hold.
Above ground crypts are a strange mixture of red brick and concrete, the latter added to repair walls that were ripped out during cold winters by frigid soldiers. Yellow fever wiped out huge numbers during various periods in the city's 18th and 19th century history, which meant that some crypts became mass graves. Family plots are cordoned off by iron or brick fences and walls. Markers list the names of those who mourned as well as dates of birth and death. Once in southern tradition it seems, obituaries of a sort were carved directly into granite and marble. Much of these words are now worn and difficult to decipher.
As time passed, the cemetery became a relic, and fell into disrepair. Many stones were broken off, leaving unmarked the resting places of person's who had been much loved by another since claimed by time. The city even chose to pave directly over the graves of some persons in order to advance a main road from downtown Savannah to its much newer Southside. (There is an entire Jewish cemetery hidden under asphalt a few blocks away.) As I traverse the sidewalk where these graves once stood, I can not help but feel that in someway I am a visitor in a place that should be sacred. I may live in 2009 with parking meters and paved roads next to me, but this is a place that still exists in another time.
Within the last century, the site has been turned into a historical park. Many of the markers once strewn about with abandon have been set into a red brick wall at the back of the cemetery. Fathers, wives, and children claimed in a time of archaic medical means, business men and immigrants who lost their lives while far from home, even sailors and at least one pirate are memorialized in this place. Button Gwinnett, signer of the Declaration of Independence is thought to be buried withing sight of that wall.
I have seen people walk dogs and throw Frisbees through the park's more open spaces. I once spied a vagrant taking a nap amidst thick bushes in the summer's heat. I've also been told that Colonial Cemetery is locked at night due to evidence of a moonlit Voodoo ritual occurring as recently as 2000. Some tourists have claimed to feel a sudden coolness
in the air as they snapped shots of strange vapors floating in the middle of the day. I am mesmerized by the place. While a large part of me wants to remain cynical, and state that the city is not haunted by a multitude of lost souls, I can not deny that it is hard to feel a real sense of solitude here. It is almost as if the humid air of this place, and of all of the the South that holds my heart, is too thick for the memories of those who breathe it in to fade away and allow real time to completely take hold.
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