MIDFIELD, Alabama -- There's something beautiful and mysterious about old graveyards.
That certainly includes the old Walnut Grove Cemetery in Midfield, which sits next to the busy Bessemer Super Highway.
There are probably tens of thousands of commuters and area residents who pass Walnut Grove every day and never stop to take a look.
The small graveyard is located north of the highway at the corner of Woodward Road.
Some of the people buried in the cemetery were born in the early 1800s, and their burials seem to go back at least to the late 1800s.
In fact, some of the area's earliest settlers may be buried there.
A rough count indicates that the cemetery contains about 225 burials, but it is devilishly hard to feel that one is getting an accurate count.
Too many markers, especially smaller ones, are covered in vegetation or have themselves been at least partly swallowed by the earth after the many decades.
Many of the stones are so weather-beaten that you can't make out any of the writing.
There are many more markers and monuments on which the names and dates are legible, if barely, but the lovely personal and religious sentiments -- rendered in a smaller, finer script -- sadly are not.
With some effort, one can make out the inscription on a tall marker for J.H. Owens, born Jan. 20, 1843, died March 12, 1909: "His toils are past/his work is done/he fought the fight/the victory won."
The inscription on another marker near the back of the graveyard tells us that A.B. Willborn, 1857-1939, is "asleep in Jesus."
The saddest to contemplate are the markers commemorating the burials of infants and very young children, common in the days of fever epidemics.
One marker near the front of the cemetery is for a little girl named Sarah Freeman, born July 22, 1918, died Jan. 17, 1919.
Many markers for infants and young children in that period had little lambs lying across the tops of the stones.
But the lamb on top of the small marker for little Sarah is missing its head.
There is one long row of taller headstones that are leaning at slightly different angles or directions.
They remind me of those pictures of the large, mysterious stone heads on Easter Island, also leaning at weird angles.
And most of the stones' inscriptions are illegible, thus emphasizing their raw quality as stone, as sculpture.
There are clusters of markers that have been broken or uprooted and then stacked together, perhaps to forestall any further damage or to keep the markers of family members together.
Like all graveyards, Walnut Grove is sacred ground.
And like all old graveyards, Walnut Grove is a feast of stone and grass and sun and beauty - and certainly history, though each passing day makes some of that history that much more difficult, if not impossible, to read.
But one cannot linger too long in the graveyard, pondering history, or thinking about time or timelessness.
The highway calls with the seemingly eternal sound of traffic like the tides.
It is time to drive back to the city and, at least for now, to leave the graveyard behind.