Rural Roads 25 June 2021

Like a lot of places, in eastern North Carolina it's easy to see the layers of time and history if you pay attention. That pecan tree that towers over a house is easily two hundred and fifty years old. That row of loblollies all that remains of larger forests. People always complain here how easily they come down not realizing it's the fault of development, loblollies are incredibly strong and able to withstand high winds when together. It's only when the majority of them are clear cut that the lonely tree becomes a danger. 

How long did it take for that farmhouse to disappear into the green? Who lived there? What was their story? Looking around the surrounding land, did it really look that different? Did they also farm corn? Were their plots smaller? The house next to them architecturally loks like it was probably built in the 1950s, but it's disappeared faster than the farmhouse, and not just because it's shorter. The trumpet vines have taken over, the rest of the green seeming to crush it in its grip.

A search of the Bogues family cemetary reveals Walter Birvin Bogues is buried there, died at the age of 16 with his brother and cousin when their boat overturned. A tragedy, a whole life's story reduced to a webpage and a gravestone marker in a cemetary with a modest sign on the side of a country road in the middle of a field.

These types of cemetaries are common here, often seeming crammed next to houses that don't fit, sometimes protected by chain link fences, just as often an afterthought, an inconvenience to "progress" and development. A couple hours west there's a family cemetary in the middle of a mall parking lot.

It all seems wrong. People who mattered, who were loved, who had lives and stories, just left behind, forgotten, paved over. These people at least have these small monuments. How many Indigenous, enslaved people and stories were not even granted this? How many of these well maintained older houses hide bodies on their property? How many dead who were just left, unnamed, unmarked? How many families just never knew what happened to their loved ones?

It's easy to see the layers. It's also easy to look out on fields and flooded rivers and know that inherently not much has changed since that pecan tree was a sapling. It's a history that everyone knows, but like an inconveniently placed cemetary, too often people's eyes just slide by, dismissing as soon as noticed.

That doesn't make it any less real. Any less true.