When people first arrived, they were greeted by acres of nothing surrounded by impenetrable pine forests. What they had, they made, down to assumptions like clothing and houses. From a general store at a crossroads would grow a cluster of people, carving out homesteads. Life consisted of home, work, church, and not much else.

Consider the scores of families existing in such remote conditions for generations. The emptiness and desolation around them pushes in over time, compressing the cluster of people into a community of ever-tightening bonds.

A hard life bred strong bonds, but also meant people died young and often. Death, therefore, was less a transition and more another facet of life. The dead still held influence on the living; their absence was both freeing and burdensome.

This is what I thought about on my first visit with my father in ten years. Time had not been kind to the northeastern corner of the cemetery, but the voices in the air were just as clear as I remembered them from childhood.