Dudley Cemetery and the Waterfall

Sometimes life provides you with metaphors and sometimes it just about hits you over the head with one.

There’s a straightforward way to get to the I-81 exit on the outskirts of the city of Blacksburg. My mom prefers going the backcountry way, over a windy road, even when it makes her a little carsick sometimes, to an obscure exit that’s like a family secret. If you follow this route along North Fork Road, with its dilapidated barns that somehow have not been made into back-bar decor and its multiple side roads named “something hollow,” you eventually get to a rickety one-lane wooden bridge that warns you that you are crossing at your own risk.

As soon as you cross, you come face to face with the sign for Dudley’s Cemetery.

Dudley’s Cemetery is an odd cemetery since, as far as I can tell, it’s a nice house, and unless the cemetery is far in the back of the house, there’s no cemetery at all.

Maybe it’s aspirational. Maybe it’s like how some people come up with beach house names — “Just Beachy” or “License to Chill” — but these people came up with “Dudley’s Cemetery” instead. Maybe it’s a funeral home. Maybe I just can’t see the cemetery and I’m being rude. I’m slightly obsessed with Dudley’s Cemetery but unfortunately the dirt track takes on a hard left, away from Dudley’s and to a trail leading to a waterfall.

I visited the trail leading to the waterfall yesterday after mom’s surgery, and today, I’m reporting from the waterfall side of life, thank goodness, rather than the Dudley’s Cemetery side of life.

Mom’s surgery went fine. She’ll be recovering for the next few days, and she needs a checkup tomorrow and then more surgeries to come.

Here’s the path to the waterfall.

I visited the falls once before, back in March, when the leaves were off the trees. I’m trying out a little photography trick where you (hopefully) get the trees and rocks and such in focus, and then let the water blur out, to try to capture its motion.

This was easier to do, I found, in March, when the leaves were off the trees.

Sometimes, when life gets stripped bare, it’s easier to see it, see its movement, the way it breathes and moves.

Sometimes, even when you’re close to Dudley Cemetery, you’re also close to a waterfall.

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Also from the waterfall side of things, Birdability — a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that every body can enjoy birding and nature — has published an essay of mine on birding with lupus, being prepared, and Mary Poppin’s enormous carpet bag, which I’ve always envied.

I hope you enjoy the essay, and please do continue to send good thoughts my mom’s way, if you get a chance.

Sending all of my waterfalliest wishes your way too.