The Zen of the Snow-Covered Cemetery

The snowstorm began on Sunday, January 25, and got more intense as the day progressed. By noon, it was relentless. The Philadelphia area expected about six inches of snow, but it soon turned to sleet and became untenable. If you were driving in a cemetery – like me – you were hard-pressed to stay on the recently plowed roads. I found myself driving on the lawn in the blinding snow at one point. Kind of reminded me of the time near Snowmass, Colorado, when my friend Mike was driving us through a snowstorm in his Subaru. The car was creeping slowly forward, but we could see nothing through the windshield. I rolled down the passenger window to get a less foggy view, and right next to us were tall hedges! “Um, Mike? I think we’re in someone’s yard….”

Gates open, roads plowed ...

So why would I be driving around a cemetery in a snowstorm? The question is, why would you NOT be driving around a cemetery in a snowstorm? Unique experience! With the snow-covered monuments and statues, it is like immersing yourself in a dynamic art installation! The zen of a snow-covered cemetery is difficult to put into words. There is a state of attentiveness that happens clearly in such an environment in such a situation. As Brad Warner says in his book, Hardcore Zen, its not enlightenment, and "yet there is something, and even though this experience doesn't change anything at all, it changes everything." 

I was there at 9:30 a.m., when the cemetery opened. This was hours before the radio started pleading with people to stay off the roads unless it’s an emergency. I knew it was going to snow the night before, so I planned on hitting Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, PA (which borders Philadelphia where I live, on the west side). It is one of my go-to cemeteries because it has lots of low statues that get covered with snow. It is also relatively convenient for me to get there and I know that unlike Woodlands Cemetery in West Philly, Holy Cross plows its roads.

The snow was soft as it fell, and I made a few quick statue photographs but JESUS CHRIST was it cold (see above)! And windy! With chemical hand warmers in my gloves, hood up over my head, I kept the SUV running with the heater on full blast as I jumped out every few minutes to photograph something. To drive through a snow-covered cemetery is one of the reasons God gave us SUVs. God, however, cannot prevent you from locking yourself out of it in a snowstorm like I experienced about fifteen years ago. Always never do that.

I was careful not to slip in the snow (which was getting deeper) as I walked amidst the gravestones. The whiteout made it easier to spot the ceramic memorial photographs on the stones. I don’t think I’d ever seen this one before, even though I’d been in Holy Cross countless times. Might be a postmortem photo, not sure. Snow and bitter cold changes your perspective, as well as your tolerance for pain.

Postmortem image?

The trucks were re-plowing the roadways during the 90 minutes or so that I was there. Saw a small herd of deer running away from the plow truck at one point. The workers must have thought I was nuts. Or maybe they thought I was true to my art. Naw, they probably just thought I was nuts. When the snow started to fall more and more heavily, it was with less and less alacrity that I would stop and jump out to make a photograph. I only strung lights on a couple statues as it was just too cold to work the fine wires and switches on the battery packs. But like Christmas, its not over, ‘til its over, and you throw away the tree (from the Louden Wainwright song, Suddenly its Christmas). I finally resorted to just shooting out the window with a zoom lens.

Driving became virtually impossible. Defrosted snow turned to ice on my wiper blades, requiring a stop every few minutes with attempts to pull enough ice off the wipers so I could sort of see through the windshield. Then came the sleet. This storm, and driving a vehicle in it, just became a discordant experience. When I finally left the cemetery and got to the main roads, vehicles were stuck everywhere, on small inclines, at intersections. Again, it reminded me of Colorado. Once I was invited by a group of British friends to ski the Arapaho Basin with them. The mountain was higher and more remote than I was used to. It began to snow heavily as we began to descend from the top. My goggles fogged up and they left me for dead. Ah, good times.

So why would I put myself through this? If I lived in Colorado, this sort of storm would be a more quotidian event. However, Philadelphia rarely sees this heavy a snowfall. So, when such a gift is bestowed upon us, I view it as an impact opportunity not to be squandered. That said, getting stuck in a snowbank on the highway is not my jam. I did have to back down an on-ramp to Interstate 95 near the airport because a small clot of cars was blocking my progress. Seems the highway maintenance vehicles plowed the snow against the on and off ramps, blocking them. As Foghorn Leghorn says, “Some people ain’t got the sense God gave a bowling ball.” 

By the next morning, the nine inches of snow was anointed with a layer of ice that only a flamethrower could penetrate. Temperatures had dropped to about eighteen degrees after the sleet storm Sunday afternoon. They dropped into the single digits over the next few days. I didn’t go back to Holy Cross Cemetery during the week because with the snow sleeted over, this concretion became nine inches of ice. My friend Linda, in my neighboring state of Delaware, calls this “snowcrete.” You take your life in your hands trying to climb through/over a crosswalk. It is relatively easy to do a James Brown split on the ice if you aren’t careful. Owwww! (screamed in a high-pitched James Brown-type vocal).

I did spend a few hours after work during the week driving through various cemeteries in the area, shooting bleached snowscapes and every once in a while, getting out of my vehicle to shoot something up close. The close shots were rare, because even though roads were plowed in some Philadelphia and south Jersey cemeteries, you could not actually walk on the ice fields. Too treacherous. Too real. Didn't want to get stuck in the snow like this hearse at Laurel Hill Cemetery!

Hearse in the snow, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia

So back to zen, and the truth found in the frozen reality of a snow-filled cemetery. There is that, but I’m also a treasure hunter, I guess, looking for that once-in-a-lifetime photograph in a snow-covered graveyard - these sophisticated built environments we make to avoid the truth. Or at least tuck it away down a side street. Attempting to make an amazing photograph is not a hobby, or a job for me – its more like an addiction, as one of the characters said in reference to wildcat oil drilling in the television series Landman. While I wish I was good enough to capture a Red-Tailed hawk plucking one of the just-released doves out of mid-air at a funeral, I must be content with shooting gravestones in the snow. I rather like this one below, which I made in Fernwood Cemetery, in Lansdowne, PA.  Kind of looks like and old Victorian lithograph, doesn't it?

While it is tempting to stay indoors where my furnace works, there is hot water to shower, and the ice box is filled with frozen burritos, I have been venturing out daily to photograph the ice in my local cemeteries. I plan to continue doing so until the city decides to remove the frozen snow, the weather gets warmer, and the rock salt barges are freed from the ice on the Delaware River (now that’s ironic).

A Cautionary New Year’s Tale Involving Cemeteries (the Non-ChatGPT Version!)

Whether you’re spending New Years’ Day visiting a premature baby in an ICU or waiting for your mom to die in hospice, you can’t help but wonder what the new year will bring. You hope its good – or at least as good as it can get. Life can be like standing in a graveyard while its snowing – you’re surrounded by death, but then something may soften the idea. You feel that newfallen snow brings the idea of new life, a fresh start.

So instead of an all-night tears-of-the-moon rain tonight, snow is forecast. The group of cemetery photographers I had planned to hang with tomorrow backed out due to the expected snow and icy conditions. But that’s why God created the SUV, am I right? Back when I drove Saab convertibles, I would’ve found myself begging off as well. But seeing as I have an SUV, I will be out there tomorrow morning in the snow. Supposedly it will still be falling in the morning. This will make my inner child very happy.

I have a go-to cemetery for snow days, with lots of angel statues and other monuments, so hopefully I’ll have some images to post with this piece. Make hay while the sun shines, they used to say. Or as an eighty-year-old woman told me yesterday, “have fun and enjoy yourself while you’re in your sixties and seventies!” Weird, but true. She said all your kids have grown, they have their own lives, and you can just go out and have fun. While its true that most of our knowledge of the world is vicarious, I hoped to meet some of my own snow ghosts to haunt my dreams.

And haunt me they did. I always figured that if I didn’t believe in them, they wouldn’t try to get me. But that does not always work. For instance, I was raised Catholic, twelve years of good-versus-evil Bible squitter. Then a couple weeks ago, I started reading a book my friend George loaned me, by Randall Sullivan, called The Devil’s Best Trick (2024, Atlantic Monthly Press). The trick is that the devil has convinced us that he’s not real. 

I began reading the book in bed. Read about twenty pages, and put it beside my pillow and went to sleep. What I read had not been scary. The book is comprised mainly of historical accounts, exorcisms, and the author’s experiences. I awoke from a really disturbing nightmare. Something dark was slowly flapping its wings as it sat on a sort of altar inside a sort of church. Really nothing more to it than that, other than the feeling of intense evil. I tried going back to sleep, but was too wired. I took the book from beside my pillow and threw it under my bed. I fell asleep just fine.

Maybe the snow tomorrow will white-out some of the evil surrounding us these days. At least until it melts and things resume looking shitty again. Slowly, the dirty soil bleeds into the white snow. But a lot of that is perception, right? When Victoria Wyeth gave a recent talk on how her grandfather Andy painted snow, she presented four categories, something like, flurries, footprints, melting snow, and dirty snow. The dirty snow intrigued me. She explained how the soil’s brown colors were drawn up and absorbed by the snow, changing its colors in subtle ways. It had gone far from being simply “dirty” snow – now it was snow tinged with raw or burnt umber. It really is all in your perception of things, right? So is dirty snow evil, filthy, or just tinged with brown pigment? It’s a perception thing – you need to choose.

Sometimes a misimpression or misunderstanding pays off. Charles Dickens’ misperception of, or rather misreading of, Ebeneezer Scroggie’s tombstone in Scotland’s Canongate Kirk graveyard lead him to believe that Scroggie was “a mean man” - it actually said, “meal man.” Scroggie, it seems, was a successful corn merchant. Dickens conjured up the famous skinflint character Ebeneezer Scrooge based on his idea of what he thought Scroggie was – a mean man. So Dickens’ mistake paid off, obviously. (Ref.)

What then will the new year bring? Misperceptions? Mistakes? Sure. Lean into them, learn from them. Certain experiences can create an artistic epiphany as sometimes happens with snow falling in a graveyard. Maybe you pivot your old way of thinking, like the “ah-ha” moment I had last week when I realized why metal water bottles are so popular. After dragging some women to the new Neil Diamond-themed movie, “Song Sung Blue,” I was about to apologize, thinking they’d found it boring. Then I realized they were drunk and didn’t care. Its been, what, twenty years since metal “water bottles” became a thing? It never occurred to me that anyone would fill them with anything but water. Well, Bob’s your uncle, as the Brits say. Same startling realization as when I found out that the song, "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz is the most famous Jewish song ever. Didn't know that, hmm? Written by two Jewish immigrants about hope, the promised land, and exile.

So after all, it snowed a bit last night, but then turned to freezing rain. The snow was tentative, I realized that. I wasn’t treating the situation like it would be the last dinner on the Titanic. When I went to the cemetery this morning, it was not what I expected, or hoped for. (Really, what is?) Instead of standing inside a calm snow globe that someone had just shaken, I was greeted by icy roads and ice-covered monuments. I spent about two hours trying not to kill myself on the ice and made a few photos while I was at it (much to the amusement of the drivers of the two plow trucks parked on the property). As I grabbed onto the base of a monument to keep myself from falling, I wondered what other purpose these monuments served. 

Why do monuments even exist? Sure, we all know they are meant to memorialize someone or something. In her article, “What monuments stand to teach Americans about themselves,” (Spectator, December 2025) Julia Friedman says that they show us “just how attached we are to grievance…reimagining defeat as victory.” A beautiful angel carved in granite indicates to us that even though the deceased person may have died, they succeeded in being borne aloft by angels to the heavens, and to their eternal reward. Success! Victory over death! Bullfeathers. Would we install a monument on the grave of the hiker who was killed by a mountain lion in Colorado on New Years' Day? 

Fancy cemetery monuments and buildings with your name on them do not define your life – your actions do. Whether you feel like last year was a dumpster fire or the Second Coming, keep in mind what ChatGPT said in my last blog post: cemeteries remind anyone seeking fresh beginnings of an inconvenient truth: Time does not reset. It only continues—and it keeps excellent records.

So for the new year, maybe be more realistic? Be more artistic – add beauty to the world. As the great philosopher Frank Zappa said, the human mind is like a parachute – it works best when its open. Accept your mortality, and that of others. There are so many choices in life that sometimes it looks like a Chinese menu. Buy that dog for your kid. Accept that people lie to you. Accept that people are lying to you every day. In my previous ChatGPT-created post, I lied to you. Maybe do your children a favor and lie to them every once in a while (but point it out shortly afterwards). Explain it to them as a life lesson – people will lie to you, so don’t be like a heifer to the slaughter, as musician Brian Eno sings in “Baby’s on Fire.” Instead of memorializing oneself with an expensive monument, maybe focus on making the world a slightly better place. Otherwise, the new year will suck as badly as the old one. Remember the Devil’s best trick… that the Devil has convinced us that he’s not real. 

I’ll leave you with the last verse of Eno’s “Baby’s On Fire.” Maybe it relates to your life, your job, your nation. Maybe in the new year, we should all show more respect for each other. I’m not expecting perfection, and neither should you. I’ll be happy with a six-seven year.

“But baby's on fire!
And all the instruments agree that
Her temperature's rising
But any idiot would know that”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Read my previous post, which I authored with the use of ChatGPT,  

"A Cautionary New Year’s Tale Involving Cemeteries:"

http://thecemeterytraveler.blogspot.com/2025/12/a-cautionary-new-years-tale-involving.html

A Cautionary New Year’s Tale Involving Cemeteries

On the last night of the year, the town gathered where it always did: not in the square, not by the river, but at the old cemetery on the hill.

This was tradition, though no one could quite remember how it began. Lanterns were hung from iron hooks, their light trembling over dates and names. People brought thermoses of cider, paper hats, and a confidence that the year ahead could be bargained with if approached respectfully—preferably where time had already lost.

“Midnight sounds clearer up here,” someone always said.

What they meant was that silence sounded clearer.

Among the crowd was Jonah Pike, who had decided—after a year of broken promises, missed chances, and a calendar that felt more accusatory than helpful—that this New Year’s Eve would be different. He would confront the year properly. He would be honest. At five minutes to midnight, Jonah wandered away from the lanterns and found himself before a modest stone, its lettering softened by decades of weather. He did not know the name carved there, but the dates caught his attention. The life between them was shorter than Jonah expected.

“Sorry,” Jonah murmured, for reasons he couldn’t explain.

The wind moved through the trees, and with it came a peculiar sound—not a voice, exactly, but the sense of being corrected. You’re not sorry, the silence seemed to say. You’re impatient. Jonah laughed nervously. Cemeteries had a way of doing that to people: making thoughts sound like answers.

As the final seconds of the year were counted—ten, nine, eight—the ground felt unusually solid beneath his feet, as if it were listening too. At midnight, the bells rang from town below. Cheers erupted. Corks popped. Someone tripped over a headstone and swore, then laughed.

Jonah, however, felt something shift—not beneath him, but behind his eyes. The year ahead unspooled in quick, unasked-for images: postponed apologies, health ignored, hours squandered, love treated as renewable instead of fragile. Nothing dramatic. Nothing supernatural. Just ordinary regret, arriving early.

The cemetery, it seemed, did not traffic in ghosts. It dealt in inventory. Jonah understood then the unspoken rule of the hill: you didn’t come here to celebrate the future. You came to measure it—against what was already finished. He walked back to the lanterns quieter than before. When friends asked what he wished for, he surprised himself by answering honestly. “Less later,” he said. “More now.” They laughed, assuming it was a joke.

By morning, the cemetery was empty again, holding its names and dates with patient neutrality. It would be there next year, and the year after that, ready to remind anyone who came seeking fresh beginnings of an inconvenient truth: Time does not reset. It only continues—and it keeps excellent records.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hey, that was almost interesting, right? I typed the title into ChatGPT and this is the AI slop it spat out. The photos are actually mine. Please stay tuned for my original New Year's piece tomorrow! Same title, this time my original writing. No more jokes!

Good Grief - A Visit to Hartsdale Pet Cemetery

Around Halloween, 2025, I visited Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, in Hartsdale, New York. This is near White Plains, north of NYC. Following directions on my phone GPS, I snaked my car off the highway into a residential neighborhood. Pulling up to the entrance of the cemetery, I was a bit underwhelmed. As the oldest operating pet cemetery in the world (est. 1896), this was a bit common-looking, sedate. It was not until an hour later as I hiked the grounds that I realized the grand and fancy entrance was on the North Central Avenue side of the cemetery, opposite of where I came in. That is technically the main entrance – I entered in the rear. (I know, that sounds like a bad joke about Planned Parenthood …)

The cemetery is hilly, and it is quite a workout to cover the property on foot (you actually have no choice, there are walkways and stairs everywhere, but no roads to drive on). Strange tripod-like contraptions cover the grounds supporting hoses for watering the grass. I guess what struck me most about the place was its deceptively small size. From the back entrance, you walk down a slope to the chapel. A man was inside who I later spoke with. A young woman was tending the grounds over near a house that seemed connected to the property. Maybe the owner lives there.

Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York

Turns out that the cemetery is rather large (five acres), but the eighty thousand burials here occupy a smaller space than eighty thousand full-body human burials would. The 7,000 memorials range in size from a modest stone to a full-sized (human-sized) mausoleum (for four spaniels). The front of the property is fancier and more elaborate than the rear, as one might expect. Walking down the slope, taking in the individual graves, was preferable, in retrospect, to starting at the main entrance and climbing uphill. Of course, I ended up hiking up the hill afterward anyway to exit the property and get back to my car. 

Many of the grave markers are adorned with ceramic photos of the deceased. What is it with people’s interest in animal grave photos? There certainly seem to be more pet photos on pet gravestones in pet cemeteries than there are ceramic photos of deceased humans on human gravestones in human cemeteries. Pet photos from gravestones garner so many likes on Instagram! Is it just because people generally enjoy posting and looking at pet photos in general on social media? 

My friend @photosofcemeteries by the way, has found and posted some astoundingly interesting ceramic gravestone pet photos, and I am totally in awe of how many likes she gets! Every once in a while I will find an unusual ceramic photo, but usually they are fairly straightforward photos of the dog in question.

Pet cemeteries exist, and while they are certainly fewer in number than people cemeteries, they are also rather difficult to find. I’ve been to some that do not appear on internet-based maps. For instance, Pine Forest Pet Cemetery in Stafford, New Jersey. Nicely maintained, fairly large. See if you can find it on any map. Go ahead, I’ll wait …..

See? Maybe if you had a paper map showing all the sand roads in the Jersey Pine Barrens, you might find it. 

Monument to War Dogs of WWI, Hartsdale

Clara Glen Pet Cemetery in Linwood, New Jersey, is smaller, yet it seems to appear on all maps. Truth is, the ones that do show up on maps seem to be hit or miss. Hartsdale you would expect to see on all the maps (and so it does), as it is probably one of the most expansive, and certainly is the oldest ACTIVE pet cemetery in the WORLD. Even though it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, it is NOT the fanciest, or most elaborate pet cemetery! I’ve been to Sea Breeze Pet Cemetery and Crematory in Huntington Beach, CA – a city where even the pizza delivery guy drives a Porsche! That one was quite elaborate, but oddly, the species were segregated. Dogs here, cats over there.

Hartsdale’s inclusiveness broadened at some point from its original designation as a “Canine Cemetery” to an all-inclusive, non-denominational pet cemetery. Not only dogs, but other species as well – cats, birds, horses, monkeys, humans. Yes, humans … even lions and tigers (but no bears, as far as I can tell). So not only is Hartsdale nondenominational, but it is also non-species specific. They of course are a member of the IAOPC, the International Association Of Pet Cemeteries & Crematories (which you may not have even known existed). This certification organization represents “best practices in pet cremation care and pet crematory management,” which are made up of 450 standards for compliance.

The Walsh mausoleum, which is home to four spaniels (one named "Toodles")

I was intrigued from the inscriptions I saw that at least two humans seemed to be buried among the guinea pigs, lizards, and monkeys in Hartsdale. I asked the gentleman in the office if this was the case, and he said yes - but they have to be cremains (see reference). I was rather shocked to read in Hartsdale’s brochure that “over 800 humans rest with their pet companions at Hartsdale!”

Buried together ...

“New York is finally allowing pet owners to rest in peace next to the living creatures who provided so much comfort, companionship, and happiness during their time on earth. After all, it doesn’t quite make sense that humans could be buried in pet cemeteries, but not vice versa.”  Read More: https://www.natureknows.org/2021/03/new-law-allows-pets-to-be-buried.html

There is also a memorial at Hartsdale to the millions of animals “taken" or sacrificed for medical research. I always hated that term, “sacrificed.” I used to do medical research in a teaching hospital and they would use that term to describe how they killed sheep. We killed them. Sure, they were “sacrificed,” but we flat-out killed them in the name of science. The general public is probably most aware of the 2013 ban on testing cosmetics on animals and on selling cosmetics tested on animals. This began with the European Union, and is spreading across the globe, as companies find alternatives for cosmetics testing that uses animals. https://www.humaneworld.org/en/issue/cosmetics-animal-testing-FAQ

"Queenie's" memorial

It is interesting (to me) to note that I’ve seen monuments in two cemeteries that acknowledge humans who have donated their bodies for scientific research. Both Hershey Cemetery in Hershey, PA and Lawnview Cemetery in Rockledge, PA have specific sections for people who have donated their bodies to science.

"Sammy"

I get it, people love their pets. I’ve kept animals at various points in my life. Kept them happy and safe, I believe. I understand that people can become very attached to their animals, and the idea of "good grief" seems to be a resounding theme at Hartsdale. Still, whenever I visit a pet cemetery, I cannot help but think how people can devote so much love, attention, and money to their pets, while there are people around them who are starving to death. We memorialize “Boots” but many people die friendless and end up being buried as relative unknowns in potters’ fields. But is there anything really wrong with that? Is there some rule or guide to indicate for us what creatures we should focus our attention on? No.

Hartsdale Pet Cemetery is a landmark to whatever – our devotion to our animal companions, I guess. According to its brochure, the Lonely Planet Travel Guidebook lists this cemetery as one of the top ten burial grounds on earth, along with the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Giza. As Brad Warner says in his book, Hardcore Zen, "Truth doesn't screw around, and truth doesn't care about your opinions." Perhaps visit in the spring, when all the trees and flowers are in bloom. It is an oddly comforting place, much more so than a people-only cemetery.