Almost every day, Bob Laney, Janet Smith and her golden retriever Gracie go walking or biking in Oakdale Cemetery, located a few blocks from our house in Wilmington, NC. It is a beautiful place founded in the early 1800’s, with some graves of people born in the late 1700’s.
I don’t know exactly how big the cemetery is, but I would guess more than 50 acres. Some parts of the boundary are adjacent to creeks and swamps. Gracie likes to explore, and she especially likes to get wet. Janet has trouble keeping her out of the swamps, where Gracie gets muddy and then tracks up our vehicle driving back home.
There are rolling hills; grassy knolls, lanes of grass, dirt and sand; and some pavement. The feeling is enhanced with many kinds of trees, shrubs and flowers. Best of all are the huge live oak trees covered in green moss, grey Spanish moss, vines, ferns and mistletoe.
Some days we see a few other people just walking, or walking their dogs or biking. Other days we don’t see anybody. Over a period of a couple weeks in March, I collected the photographs seen here.
Besides being pastoral and bucolic, Oakdale is good place to get exercise by moving around the grounds on foot or bike. My favorite activity is to pedal my regular bicycle [as opposed to Janet’s and my electric motor bikes] all around the lanes. There are so many pathways that, even after a year and quarter of visiting there, I occasionally see some flowering bush or granite monument which I have not seen before.
I hope you enjoy the pictures. I liked taking them.
