Spontaneous Musings

During pandemics. Maybe I should change my name to "she-who-walks-through-cemeteries"? No, too long, and I have troubles spelling cemetery. I keep wanting to spell it with an "a" for some reason.

I took two walks through the cemetery this week. The first? I got lost.
My mother found this amusing. As did I in retrospect. In my defense it is relatively easy to get lost in Greenwood Cemetery...it's basically endless rolling hills, trees, graves, flowering bushes, and pounds. You can, if you go deep enough into it - forget the outside world entirely. Prospect Park is similar - but far more crowded and much harder to avoid pesky people who insist on putting my life in danger. Greenwood - has gates and tends to restrict who enters. Prospect Park lets anyone inside -- so as a result, there are encampments, and people doing whatever they dang well please. For example? I couldn't take a walk in the woods without running into : bicyclists, an oil painter, a professional photography club, several joggers, people doing exercise routines, a couple making out, and a bunch of people smoking pot. I'd recommend avoiding it at all costs...at least for the time being. You can also get lost in Prospect Park, by the way.

The second? I got a map. Both were very long walks, with lots of cool vistas.

Anyhow, take a walk through Greenwood Cemetery with me...and watch me have fun with photography in the process. I never really enjoyed taking photos until I got the Iphone.
















Now on to the good stuff...





























Dell pond - one of two turtle ponds.






Photographer and a bird - I think it is a coot. He wouldn't let me get a closeup. But I was able to take from a distance and enlarge.


































The trick is to pick off times, and to steer clear of the popular paths. For example? I just walked up to the pond and left. Also I didn't go down to the lake - which is very popular. I tended to meander on the less walked paths at all possible. I saw people - but it was about ten, maybe fifteen if that, and not together. And not close. I was as if not more far apart from them - than I am when I leave my apartment building at times.

These walks are helping me stay sane. They clear my head. And they are perfectly safe - far safer than getting food deliveries or doing laundry, or taking out the trash - which are kind of essential activities.

And how weird is it that I feel the need to defend walking in the evening around a cemetery? Greenwood extended their hours at all their gates during the crisis - to help people and provide them with a place to stroll, and a means to visit their dead. The previous hours were 10-4PM on weekdays, and 10-3pm on Sunday. It's why I rarely went - you'd have to go on Saturday.
Now? They are open weekdays from 11 am - 7pm, and 8am to 7pm on weekends.
Although the gates at Fort Hamilton and Park Slope entrances are close to cars during the weekdays. And in the evening hours.