On the side of a mountain, up a winding dirt road, there is an old graveyard in the dappled shade of the tall forest pines.
The small old sign by the opening in the old, iron fence reads “Bitterview Boneyard.”
It’s not that unusual for these old homesteads and ranches of the West to have a family graveyard, but this one… well, the buried don’t seem to have been related.
And one of the stones is a lot newer than the rest. My research shows that it is from 2019.
Egregious plug for TheMisterT’s Audible Original.
This is an older project, I made most of the headstones about a decade ago, with the Clara and Girl in Green ones each made a few years later. They’re rigid foam insulation, mostly “carved” with a heated stencil cutter, but also with a craft knife. Various other styrofoam bits as well as decorations made with metal, plastic, airdry clay, craft foam, and wood were added with construction adhesive. Then the whole thing was painted with layers of greys and watered-down black acrylic paint. They have 2 lengths of PVC pipe on the back through which are short lengths of rebar that have been pounded into the ground. They’ve become a bit dinged up and damaged over the years, especially being stored in our non-climate-controlled shop loft. Meh.
The original fence was inspired by something I saw on the internet where you slice “links” from pipe insulation. I had trusted the adhesive strip that was part of the original to close the links and they did not hold. So the broken chains sat in storage for years. I carefully glued each and every one of them with hot glue this year. I also had to by another insulator to make another length of chain, so it’s a little different. I think it makes the “scene” just look that much more old and repaired over time.
The forecast shows chances of snow starting in a few days, so hopefully I can get some lonely and desolate pics of snow-dusted headstones this year!
