The Cache Series
The Thanatopsis series of caches celebrates a life-long interest of
mine, old rural cemeteries. I have also included an Emily Dickinson poem
with each cache, since she wrote many poems about death. The poems themselves
were taken from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by
Thomas H. Johnson. Emily Dickinson published 1,775 poems. Each poem of
the series follows the numbering of the "Harvard (variorum) edition,"
according to Thomas Johnson. As a heading to each poem, I quote Johnson
in giving the earliest known manuscript for the poem, and its earliest
publication date.
Why "Thanatopsis?" My dictionary defines it as "a meditation upon death."
A final word: All caches may be found without showing any disrespect
for our predecessors. I hope that all finders have an opportunity to pause
and consider what life (and death) must have been like in the North Woods,
more than a century ago.
The Cache
The cache is a match holder covered with camo tape.
The Cemetery
Lower Running Valley Cemetery
The Poem
Harvard Number 809 (From The
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson.)
Earliest known manuscript: c. 1864; First publication: 1914
Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity –
Unable they that love – to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity.