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Death and burial is a stock theme of cowboy folksongs.
To be buried in a narrow grave where the buffalo pawed was a sad condemnation;
better to be carried back to the little church yard on the green hillside.
Emigrants on the overland trails, too, dreaded death and burial on the
prairie. Families of those who died on the Oregon Trail, for instance,
sometimes carried their cold loved ones along until they could be laid
somewhere more proper, like Ash Hollow, rather than on the open plains.
Trees and fences played a big part in these feelings. Euro-Americans are
conditioned to desire their cemeteries be enclosed, segregating the quick
and the dead, and they want them to be adorned with trees. Especially
evergreen trees, because they symbolize eternal life.
That's all very well, but these obsessions with enclosure and trees cause
problems when pursued on the northern plains. Snow is the reason. People
ought to know better. We have some four generations' experience with the
technology of snow management. The extension literature of the northern
states and the prairie provinces is full of sound advice about how to
build and plant windbreaks that will trap snow where you want it and keep
it off where you don't. The most important principle is to place your
snow fence or tree line far enough away from the area you are trying to
protect.
Early one spring I was examining a wonderful old graveyard adjacent to
a Catholic church and was saddened to see serious damage to a number of
iron grave markers. Several cast iron markers were broken off at thin
points in their structure. Several fine wrought iron crosses were crumpled,
although still standing and salvageable.
What's happened here, I wondered. I thought perhaps vandals had driven
through with a vehicle. Then, studying the situation, I figured it out.
Well-meaning patrons of the cemetery had planted pine trees along its
northern and western perimeters. Remember the hard winter of 1997? Trapped
by those tall pines, the snow piled higher and higher on the burial area,
breaking and crushing the old iron crosses.
In settlement days there were some plains folk who did not plant trees
in their cemeteries. These were people of the plains of other continents--Germans
from Russia, for instance, or Ukrainians. This was to their taste, and
it was fine in relation to the plains winter environment. Snow blew right
through their graveyards.
The problem comes when later generations, becoming acculturated, start
to plant trees. They never plant far enough away, and the effect is to
cause massive drifts atop the graves. Even chain-link fences interfere
with the wind enough to cause problems. In many cases this is only an
inconvenience. Visitors in winter and early spring are unable to prowl
among the graves on account of the
accumulated snow. Where cemeteries contain historic and fragile grave
markers, however, the effect is destructive.
A modest suggestion: Perhaps, instead of attaching our modern conceptions
of cemetery adornment and symbolism onto the traditional burial grounds
of the plains, we should respect the intent and beliefs of the people
who established them and now lie there. Our ancestors knew a little something
about how to live and die on the Great Plains.
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