There is something comforting and lovely about old churches and churchyards. Don’t you think? Perhaps, it is because I am a Virginian. I have heard it said that Virginians take good care of their dead.

Maybe it is because many of our churches and churchyards go far back into our history? A thoughtful, reflective walk is a result from time spent in an old church and its yard. Members of these old churches are faithful in keeping their burial grounds neat and tidy. One can quietly walk around old tombstones and get a glimpse of the folk that came before us and hear part of their life story.

Exploring the Massanutten Mountain in the Shenandoah Valley on horseback is how I joyfully spent my youth. Kids on horses exploring. Packed peanut butter sandwiches for us, carrots for the horses when our hungry bellies stopped us. Many times we would ‘discover’ an old family grave plot in those mountains.

History tells us family folk lived far up on the Massanutten Mountain years ago. They were displaced to make room for the Shenandoah National Park, leaving only old, hardly noticeable family grave plots. Old abandoned farms along the base of the mountain left theirs as well.

We spent time trying to read those tiny headstones while eating our sandwiches with our horses grazing nearby. I do not suppose we were very reverent as teenagers walking all over those graves, but I can still recall the feelings they gave us when reading the stones of an infant, a two-day old child, or a young mother, or a six-year old child, or an ‘old’ 50-year-old father.

Years later clearing newly purchased mountain property in the backwoods of our Virginia mountains one fall, we came across a flat area with stones carefully laid out. It did not take long to see it was a graveyard. No headstones, no names. We kept it cleared out as long as we owned that property.

I still enjoy strolling through old graveyards. Would you like to join me through a few?