All Hollows

    This year found me in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery again.

  Where I found Mr. van Winkle again. 

Last year was only the beginning …
    Driving up Route 9, through Tarrytown my cell phone rings.  It's the gallery director of  the Preserve who I am supposed to meet at 11:00.  She's asking for a little extra time as they are bringing the preserve manager home from the hospital after an emergency appendectomy earlier in the week (Wasn't it appendicitis that did Houdini in on Halloween?  I'll have to keep an eye on this woman). "Fine, I'm not pressed for time.  I'll see you a little later than we planned" thinking - good I can still catch some morning light and take a walk and maybe some pictures in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery.  Been meaning to do that at this time of year for a while now.
    I pull in to the cemetery and am behind a row of SUV's.  I had no idea it was still an active cemetery, which it obviously is.  Sleepy Hollow is the new cemetery, what I am really looking for is the Old Dutch churchyard, which I've passed down the hill and road a bit back.

    So I get out and walk.  The trees are pretty.  I get back in my car after a brief hike (hilly, some plots and mausoleums have fabulous views of the Hudson and Palisades cliffs across the river) and drive around.  Why look, there's Mark Hellinger.  Lots of imposing vaults.  But not a lot of really old stones. I take an older narrow unpaved road down hill, markers right up to the edge of the ruts,  branches hanging low over the path, wind around, get on a narrower road and swing a few hairpins to come upon the Irving Family plot.

Appropriate historic marker - Thank You Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow Historical societies.  The light is falling in a perfect pin spot on Washington's stone.

He fought in the Revolutionary War?  Must re-read the stories, must look up a bio of the fellow.
    Still these stones are not the colonial era markers I've eyed from the road.  Down another hill.  Ah, there's the old yard.  And the old church.  There are a pair of old stones coming out of a rotted tree.  That's one big old tree.  Must have been planted between the stones when they were.

Hmm, there's a pumpkin on a gravestone.

I'll just park down here by the gate and climb up the embankment.  Why, there's no way to do that.  Too many walls, vaults, too steep etc.  I'll walk back along the cemetery wall and work my way in from uphill.  Jeez, it's getting steep along the side of this road.  Now there's a big red truck coming down the hill.  Very, very slowly.  I'll stop and wait for him to get by, then go on.  He's …stopping.  He has a long white beard.  He rolls down the window.  He has an empty black birdcage in the back seat.  Well there are signs all over saying the place is open to the public from 9 am to 4:30.  It's 11:00 in the morning.  I'm probably not doing anything wrong.
    "Are you lost?" he asks
    "Lost, me? No, just wandering around."
    "Do you know what happened here?"
    "Which time?" I ask.  Trying to remember the damn story because I'm sure I must have read it, sometime.
    "Do you know the story?"
    "Well, sure.  There's lot of stories,"  Vague, I think.  Vague can cover a lot.  Try to look alive.  "The Headless Horseman.  Rip van Winkle.  Say, are you Rip van Winkle?"  It is a nice beard.
    "I did just wake up."  He chuckles.
    Well, that's vague too and covers a lot of … ground.  They all do here.  Acres of it.
    "Do you know who's here?"
    "Oh, sure.  I just came from Mr. Irving's place up the road."
    "Do you know who else is here?"
    "Why no, why don't you tell me?" I'm really not in a hurry, in fact I have some time to … kill.  Oh, dandy.
    Reaching in to a Christmas gift bag (the type with decorative braid for handles) he pulls out an old tin type of the wooden bridge that used to be right over… there. 

Where my car is parked … shit.
    "You go over and look down into the creek and then look at the picture, then look at the bridge.  That's where it was.  The bridge that young Washington would be safe if he got over and into the churchyard.  The bridge that the pumpkin was thrown from.  And if you walk out into the yard from the road here to those red stones you'll find Catriena van Tesel

and her true husband.  Brahm is over there."
    "Where the pumpkin is?"
    "Yes. That's me."
    Him, or him that put the pumpkin there?  That's the English language for you.
    "Well, there was a pumpkin up in the newer cemetery I saw too."
    "Where?!  Those are just smart alecks.  This one is mine.  The stories are all true.  Washington used the stories of people around here.
    That clear area between the stones?

Some say there's an unmarked grave there.  The grave of the headless Hessian soldier.  No one else has ever been buried there. Not in hundreds of years."
        We chatted further about the area, maybe someday the original Irving home would be excavated if Ann Rockefeller would get interested in it.  The farm house at Sunnyside was buried in '48 by the historical society,  having been a ruin since it was burned by the British,  deriding the Depp movie, Hollywood having stolen the concept of  a tree originally used by the Native Americans for their ceremonies and perverted via Hollywood into a “Death Tree”. 
    How, having come from the Dutch, he could respect other religions  unlike the rest of the colonists.  How the land had been stolen from the Indians and the creek run red with it, though he assured me he was not there. 
    Still, his vintage being a bit iffy I continue wondering.  I assure him I wasn’t there either, so no hard feelings.  He recommended I examine the van Tesel stones and the carving on them, the optical illusion of the faces protruding in the slanting afternoon light.  He wished me luck with my project. We shook hands and Bill drove out of the church gates, turned left across the bridge and was gone.  Just gone.
    Eventually I followed.  Straight to Flying Fingers where I found Cherry Tree Hills Indian Summer lace weight.  Which will be a web shawl.  Complete with spider.

Comments

[Mum]

Lordy, lordy, you've been traipsing through that cemetary again. It is a Beauty.

And there's Bill-- did he show up just for you, or does he go into cemetary when he sees a car, thinking he might catch a grave digger? And at Halloween time, very brave of you. Nice pic of him.....and the cemetary.

[Kirsten]

Fabulous post! You must send it to Heather over at CraftLit. She just did The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on her podcast. The lace for the web shawl at the end is a nice touch!