Happy Thanksgiving!
I really enjoyed my time at home with family! Home for me is Rensselaer, New York, a town upstate near the capital of Albany. While I was home, I decided to go on a walk with my mom and our dogs to the cemetery that’s down the road from our house, the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.
As you can see in the map, we didn’t spend our time where the actual graves are, but instead in the clearing between the actual cemetery and the woods. It was nice to spend some time outside in the cool air and my dogs really enjoyed the walk 🙂
I think this area is really special because of its cultural value. It’s brown and gray right now, but in the summer it’s a beautiful place to be. On the Fourth of July, all the nearby neighborhoods come down to the clearing to watch the Albany fireworks because the cemetery has a great view of the city.
This area is great for dog-walking too – there are always people with their dogs walking past my house down to the cemetery! My personal connections with this place are that I actually did a lot of my learning how to drive down here and my grandfather is buried underneath one of the trees in this cemetery.
In comparison to my place in Centennial Woods up in Burlington, this place has much less tree cover. There’s a good amount of woods but most of the land is cleared for homes or the cemetery itself. Another difference is how the places are used. While these woods aren’t really for trekking through (mostly due to the “No trespassing” signs), people are encouraged to hike in Centennial Woods. What the areas do have in common is the general makeup of the tree species. Both the woods nearby Holy Sepulchre Cemetery and in Centennial Woods contain birches and maples, though my place at home has more birches yet not as many conifers like the Eastern white pines in Centennial Woods.
I totally forgot to leave a gift at this spot, but Bubba and Pip definitely left their marks…
