Several months ago, in the dark early morning, the old (condemned) Saint Mary's Church (est. 1880) adjacent to Greenwood Cemetery next door to my house, burned down. All that survived was the smoke blackened hollowed out building and part of the Sunday school. I heard that the fire was caused by transients building a fire within the church, trying to stay warm. I watched the fire from my backyard barefoot and wrapped in a blanket (it was around 5 AM as I recall, and the ground was icy). Sparks flew so high I was afraid our entire block might catch fire, fortunately it did not.
A week or so after the fire, on a brilliantly beautiful day, I walked over to the church's remains with my digital camera and snapped about 60 pictures, my favorite was a red rose in bloom planted at the foundation of a blackened wall, the azure cloud swirled sky as a backdrop featured in the photo on this site's links page. I have always loved the church, I was sad to see it charred and destroyed, but it did look pretty cool with the sky as a background. I also shot the raven in the clouds from the churchyard. There were a few people milling through the site paying thier respects. I met a woman who was christened there as a little girl, then later married there in her twenties, an old man who was married in the church, and a woman whose mother and father had been married there.
A few weeks later, I woke up at dawn, and was on my way out the door, when I saw a spectacular double rainbow over the decimated Church. I ran inside, grabbed my camera and climbed up onto the fence, taking as many pictures as I could while the rainbows lasted..
The week before Memorial Day weekend, 2003... Armed with my camera I headed out and up the road to take botanical photo's at Redwood Park. I was blown away by the pictures I captured in the park, trilliums in bloom, saxifrage, skunk cabbages, shamrocks, wild ginger, in bloom! I saved the photos to my computer and went back out headed towards the train tracks out past the churchyard to take pictures of widflowers. As I walked down the tracks at Alliance, lo and behold, a mirrorball (largely de-mirrored, but still)resting on a cross tie like it was born there. Snap. Then even more fantastic luck, native irises in bloom, teasels in bud and dried in place, vibrant sweet peas in blossom, clusters of hot pink thimbleberry flowers, electric blue lupines,forget me nots - it was fantastic luck to find so many plants in bloom to photograph... a swallowtail butterfly even held still long enough for me to get a nice open winged pic. I was elated. On my walk home, I noticed what I'd somehow missed before as I walked past the church site...The church was completely gone, leveled to black charcoal mixed with mud ground flat. An empty space, a vacant lot where once there was a beautiful steepled Victorian Church. That evening, I took about 60 photos of the sun setting behind the Cemetery and Church lot. If you look closely at the sunset photo, you'll notice the sunday school and the out building and church walls that are in the rainbow photo are gone. Days later I found out that Jeff had passed away on the 20th of May. I felt the series of church photo's were appropriate symbolically and I hope that you do too.
Feel free to use the photo's for non commercial purposes as you please.
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I decided to take a bag of wildflower seeds down to the vacant lot where St. Mary's Church once stood and scatter them around, don't think anyone will mind.
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Mission accomplished, Last week, I went to the church lot with a grocery bag full of seedheads I collected from my flower garden(fortified with a few store bought packets)and scattered them all over the bare ground. It looks like the soil is very compacted (like they steamrolled the lot after clearing it) but hopefully with a few rains it will fluff up a little and the seeds will take hold.
Someone saved the
rose that I photographed, it's a lot worse for the wear, and looks lonesome all by itself, but whoever saved it from being steam rolled staked up the plant neatly to protect it from the wind too. . .
About The Site Photos
