A Cemetery Nestled in the Forest
October 2016
Naomi Cemetery – Walker County Georgia
Nestled within densely forested land where thick vegetation muffles the sound of distant traffic, family members mourn the passing of their young child. Tears roll gently down the mother’s flushed cheek while her parents and her husband comfort her in silence.
There is closeness and there is privacy;
their secret sorrow shared only with the
trees and the inhabitants of the woods
surrounding the graveyard.
This is Naomi Cemetery. Or, at least,
this WAS Naomi Cemetery.
Naomi cemetery is a quaint, rural cemetery in
Walker County, GA.
Burials date back generations yet it is
still an active cemetery with modern gravestones dating
as recently as this year.
When families buried their loved ones here, they chose this
location for its placid solitude; a hallowed ground where
mourning and remembrance takes place in the comforting crook of nature.
In recent months, however, the entity in charge of the
land surrounding Naomi Cemetery clear cut the entirety of
the protective forest.
Sunlight is no longer filtered through a thickened
canopy and trees no longer filter the air.
Naomi lies fully exposed and its gravestones suffer
under a layer of dust stirred up by heavy tree cutting equipment.
On the one year anniversary of their child’s
death, the young couple visits the grave site of the
child taken, too soon, from this world of life.
Their sorrow is abating with time. They are
changed and so, too, is Naomi Cemetery.
Naomi was a quaint Cemetery surrounded by a dense forest until someone cut down all the trees.
