#roadside memorial

[caldrive]

One of way-too-many roadside memorials along Highway 33 (October 2023).

#roadside memorial #central valley #rural #california #fresno county #highway 33

[zachbradleyphotography]

My heart goes out to you

Hinkley, California

#film photography #mojave desert #hinkley california #indie #emotive #ghosts in love #filmisnotdead #southwest #photographers on tumblr #zach bradley #original photography #california #desert ghosts #35mm #american southwest #a e s t h e t i c #roadside memorial #nikon n55

[heartshapedcaskett]

Fairmont, North Carolina

#my photography #film photography #photography #americana #southern gothic #girls who shoot film #film is not dead #low country #low country gothic #urbex photography #roadside memorial #abanonded places #rural places #rural photography #gothic americana #ruralcore #cemetery #cemeteries #graveyards #graves #cemetery photography #graveyard photography #morute #rustcore #rustic #coffinwood #cottage core #cottagecore #nostalgiacore

[sequ0iart]

performing a ressurecution by invoking any deity that will listen

instagram | twitter

#roadside memorial #illustration #digital art #horror art #beanie babies #weirdcore #beanie baby art #creepy cute #yume kawaii #surreal art #liminal spaces #suburban gothic #ghostcore #dreamcore #dereality #beanie baby #deja vu #magick

[somewheredownthesidewalk]

May 28, 2023

Albuquerque, New Mexico

#photographers on tumblr #photography #photos #albuquerque #new mexico #memorial #roadside memorial #shamrock

[sixminutestoriesblog]

descansos

photo link

Growing up in the southern US it never occurred to me that some of the things I was used to seeing on a daily basis would be considered odd by anyone else. Yes, there were always cows in fields near the roads, Piggly Wiggly made sure you always saw large signs with a smiling pig on it as you traveled between towns, South of the Border wasn't really a theme park - but it kind of was - and you weren't going to escape its billboards until you were north of the Mason-Dixon line

and there were going to be small white crosses decorated with plastic flowers along the road as you drove.

I took those little white crosses so for granted that it wasn't until someone from another country commented on how strange they were that I even, with the front of my brain, remembered them. They certainly weren't everywhere - but they were common enough on the sides of the road that you couldn't drive too far without seeing one and they became almost ubiquitous, as much a part of the natural landscape as the cows in the fields. I don't even remember ever having to ask why they were there, though I must have. They simply were and me and all my friends knew exactly why they were there and what they meant.

The crosses, sometimes by themselves and sometimes in clusters, marked the spot where people had died in traffic accidents.

Now, humanity likes its memorials. We built a lot of them and if the people in charge won't build one, oftentimes, people will create them for themselves, showing up to specific spots to leave flowers, stuffed animals or candles. They're a way for us to mark somewhere as different from the rest of the world, a place for grief and remembrance, somewhere we can gather and acknowledge a wound left behind by a passing. These aren't graves, very often the body or bodies are laid to rest somewhere else entirely. Instead these are communal mourning places, either somewhere special to the ones lost or else where violence overtook them, usually unexpected and sharply quick. Memorials aren't often for expected deaths. Memorials are for the sudden ones, the unpredictable ones, the ones that leap out of the dark and took their prey before we knew what was happening.

'Something terrible happened here, pay attention'.

Roadside memorials aren't unique to the US either. Traffic accidents happen the world over and its human nature to want to mark the spot a loved one's last moments were, where the tragic accident came upon them unaware. There are ghost bikes left behind, a bicycle painted entirely white and chained to the spot where a cyclist was killed by a car. There are ghost shoes, nailed to poles at eye height, painted entirely white to mark where a pedestrian was hit. Some countries leave wreaths, bouquets, stone markers or signs. Some, no doubt, leave crosses. But why are small, wooden, usually white, crosses so uniform across the southern US?

Part of it is, of course, that the 'Bible Belt' stretches the same route and so markers of Southern brand Christianity are commonplace.

That's not where it started.

These small white crosses started in New Mexico and spread outward from there. New Mexico, in turn, inherited them from Mexico. In New Mexico these roadside crosses are called descansos, a 'resting place'. Long before cars, when a body needed to be carried to its final resting place, the funeral procession would either carry the coffin on their shoulders, or in cases where the graveyard was further away, in a animal drawn cart. Each place the coffin was set down so that its bearers could rest, or stop for the night, was marked with a white wooden cross, hammered into the ground where the dead, and their escort, had rested before moving onward. These white crosses marked the road from where the person had died to the graveyard where they were settled into their final resting place. In fact, over time, the white crosses came to represent the path from town to the graveyard, serving as a kind of sign post to anyone that needed them. Sometimes, on trails far from home, the white cross next to the roadside would actually serve to make the grave of someone that had died so far from anywhere that there was no where to bury them but for the most part, descansos were resting places on the way to the final resting spot.

With the arrival of cars and faster transportation, the stark little descansos weren't needed to serve as markers of sorrow that had traveled, and found rest, along the way toward its final destination anymore. Instead, they began to serve another purpose. The little white crosses stayed a place for grief to rest from its burden for a while but now it was in the form of leaving offerings or memories, a place where the people left behind, mourning their loved ones, could remind anyone traveling that route that someone precious had died and was still mourned. Descantos always faced the road, not away from it. The whole point of a descantos is to be seen by strangers.

In the 1940s through the 1950s the Arizona Highway Patrol began marking places along the highway where automobile fatalities had occurred with small white crosses. Even after they stopped, the families of the dead picked up the habit and carried it forward. While the laws regulating roadside memorials vary from state to state in the US, in New Mexico, descansos are still considered sacred and on the rare occasions road workers are forced to move them when repairing or expanding the roads, they are careful to restore them to as close to the spot they were taken from as possible. These days the forms the memorials take vary widely, but whether they stay a humble cross or not, they still serve to both let mourners mark the spot where they lost their loved one -

and to also serve as a warning and a reminder to all passing motorists.

'Traveling the highways of America is dangerous. Keep alert. Be aware. Don't become the next white cross sprouting along the side of this long, deadly stretch of American highway."

#descansos #roadside memorial #roadside cross #travel #new mexico #mexico #american highway #ngl I feel weird posting pictures #white crosses #shrine #roadside shrine

[inthecityofgoodabode]

February 2023: Honeybee & A Walk

First honeybee of 2023: 

Seen while walking: 

A stray dog just chilling. If I trek this way again, I’ll probably pack a sandwich bag with some dog food just in case we see each other: 

I’ve never understood why someone would put up a gate but not fencing to go with it. The gargoyles are a nice touch: 

I’d been meaning to check out this new construction site. It wasn’t very interesting but I discovered new lands to explore. It was like accessing a new area in a video game: 

I had already walked a long way so this is was as far as I went but I’ve marked it for future exploration: 

#garden #front flower bed #flower #daffodil #honeybee #seen while walking #seed pods #hawk #blue sky #trees #sun #sunlight #lens flare #train car #train graffiti #roadside memorial #vacant lot #dog #feral dog #gate #gargolyes #clouds #field #landscape #life in memphis #stray dog #walking #exploring

[ashtrayfloors]

Roadside Memorials // (Photos by John Fowler, Dave Parker, Rachel, Stewart Black, remediate.this, and Laura (Lelu))

#photography #black and white photography #photo collection #memorial #roadside memorials #roadside memorial #not my photos

[paulydsprincealbert]

roadside memorial ghost

#roadside memorial #southern gothic #texas gothic #midwest gothic #regional gothic

[caldrive]

Roadside memorial, Trona Road, California. Not your average California roadside memorial, for sure.

#desert #california #roadside memorial #mojave #mojave desert #trona #san bernardino county

[craniopagi]

#roadside memorial #regional gothic #rural gothic #southern gothic #roadside #oc

[crossmanufacturing]

Customer Review Roadside Cross

Customer Review-thank you Laura for your kind testimonial! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Thank you so much for the beautiful cross I got to place in the site my son pass away at. You did an amazing job. The process was easy and quick I was able to place it on his birthday. You would not go wrong with there service. Communication was easy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

View On WordPress

#personalized roadside cross #roadside cross #roadside marker #roadside memorial #roadside memorial cross #roadway cross

[emperornorton47]

Ghost bike

#roadside memorial #bicycle #Painted #Irvine #orange county #california #photo #digital #original photographers #foothills

[floralmemorials]

A Quiet Hillside in Kansas

I went to Coronado’s Castle just outside Greensburg Kansas recently and this quiet beautiful cemetery was next to the castle entrance. First I should explain that the castle was built during the 1930s as part of a WPA project and Coronado had nothing to do with it other than to use his name. The cemetery is along a rolling hillside and even had a few cattle grazing at a distance.

View On WordPress

#cemeteries #cemetery #cemeteryroadside #Find A Grave #Floralmemorials blog #generations #grave #grave markers #gravesite #graveyard #history #Interesting photos #Kansas #Kansas cemeteries #Kansas sky #roadside memorial #Thoughts & More

[americanhell]

#rural aesthetic #voidcore #oddcore #fever dream #feverdreamcore #nostalgic #rural america #american gothic #mine #my photography #crosses #roadside #memorial #lostcore #liminal spaces #southern gothic #ruralcore #abyss #dreamcore #rural gothic #eerie #eeriecore #nostalgiacore #roadside memorial #regional gothic #art #darkcore #dark art #bleak #backroads

[stbot]

the new norm of studios not only cancelling shows with diverse casts and characters after a single shortened season but then immediately removing them entirely from their platforms so no one can ever legally watch them again is gross and frustrating enough on its own, but there’s something really insidious about the fact that so many of these shows were the recipients of targeted hate campaigns before they even aired just because they were deemed to be “too woke” or “too gay” and how that plays into the larger sociopolitical landscape rn.

like tv shows are not nearly as important as the very real actual human people being hurt and affected by current and proposed legislation, but we as a community and as individuals are being told on all fronts that we can’t exist; not in real life, and not even in the escapist fantasy of television shows

#i know i'm not saying anything that we as a community are not already aware of but like jesus fuck #every single time??? #the finale literally aired three weeks ago!!! wtf wtf wtf #grease rise of the pink ladies #willow 2022 #willow dared to have two queer actors playing lesbian love interests #rotpl really gave me two TWO queer nonbinary actors playing lesbian love interests #and then paramount dragged me out back like an old dog while disney smoked a pipe on the porch #like netflix and amazon both suck for a myriad of reasons #but at least they keep their cancelled shows on the platforms like some macabre roadside memorial to the sapphics #guess we'll see how long that lasts #sorry to be a bummer on main but uh i am Going Through Some Things and this all is super not helping