Union Cemetery/Lost & Found on Bald Eagle Creek

It rained in the morning, but quite conveniently for us, the rain was done by lunchtime. My husband had an early afternoon appointment in Pine Grove Mills and then later on, a car appointment with our mechanic just outside of Port Matilda. I had planned to ride along and do two things: a walking tour of Pine Grove Mills cemeteries, to be followed by a little adventure along Bald Eagle Creek.

He dropped me off at the Pine Grove Mills Cemetery, which I had never visited before, and I spent some time walking through, taking pictures, saying hello to everybody there. That cemetery dates from 1896, with the first burial occurring that summer. 

I walked across the street to nearby Union Cemetery, which is tucked in between the Pine Grove Mills Presbyterian Church and St. Albans Anglican Church. The town of Pine Grove Mills dates from the late 1790s, and the Union Cemetery has graves from about that point forward.

It is also one of the most beautiful little cemeteries I have ever seen, and I took the photo above while sitting on a peaceful little bench at the back of the cemetery, surrounded by flowers and plants that pollinators just might love.

I walked over to the Farmers' Market, which runs from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., bought some produce (tomatoes, sweet corn, onions, radishes, and garlic), and met my husband there. I put my veggies in the back seat and hopped in, and we headed for the car appointment, where untold adventure unexpectedly awaited me.

For I am apparently in some kind of "losing blue things" nexus. More on that in a minute. I had on a short-sleeve shirt and a skort and hiking shoes, and my husband offered me a long-sleeve shirt of his in case the bugs were bad along the creek.

Well, "bad" doesn't even begin to describe it. The bugs were ravenous, mean, rude, and thirsty! And soon I was fighting them off tooth and nail. For apparently, I am delicious and nutritious. I took my husband's shirt and turned it into pants: tucked a leg into each arm hole, buttoned the shirt, tied it around my waist. Voila! Pants! (In the extras, I've placed a photo of the accessible walkway to the creek, with an attractive and inviting bench.)

I also had my new blue tunes box with me, and I had turned it on as soon as I got out of the car. I put it on shuffle, but the first song I heard was Muskrat Love. Now HOW THE HECK did THAT song ever get on there? Oh my gosh, NOOOOOOooooOOO!!!!

I got it out and messed with the tunes box, picked a good song, then picked another good song. Walked. Took pictures. I keep the blue tunes box in a tiny clear ziploc type baggie. Which I had in my hand, as I was now wearing my husband's shirt (which HAD pockets) as pants. But as I walked along the creek, I realized suddenly that there was no more music. When I went to pick the next song, I looked at my hand. I still held an empty baggie in it: but the blue tunes box was GONE!*

Of course, I retraced my steps instantly, but I did not see it. It is bright blue! How could it be lost? It would be SO VISIBLE in the woods or along the creek, wouldn't it? Oddly enough, the tunes box is nearly the identical shade to the watch I lost a few weeks ago, prompting me to buy a new watch. Why is this happening? I'm losing blue things!

So I spent the next 15 minutes looking for it, to no avail. By then, I was frantic, just about ready to sit down and cry. Where was the fun adventure I had been hoping for? Why am I losing things? Have I grown more incompetent with age? I sat down, tore everything out of my daysack, threw it all on the ground, sorted through it. Nope, no tunes box.

I heard my husband greet me from the accessible fishing pier, and I said, "Aw, hon, I lost my blue thing!" He thought I had said I'd dropped my camera, but no, it wasn't anything quite as awful as that. He thought I looked cute wearing his shirt as my pants. He told me he was CERTAIN he could find my missing blue tunes box for me.

So I told him and showed where I'd walked, and we both took parts of the creek and woods, and searched. It was not a big area. How could it be GONE? And for good measure, I stopped and took everything apart: my clothes, my camera bag, my fanny pack, my daysack. ALL OF IT. Out it all came. Nope. No dice.

The next thing I heard was my husband, walking toward me, whistling. Yes, WHISTLING. "I found it," he said. And he told me that the new blue tunes box had taken an odd bounce, and landed behind a log along the creek, where with just one more slip, it would have fallen into Bald Eagle Creek and sailed away and been lost forever! "You needed to be about a FOOT taller to even SEE it," he said. I told him he is "My Hero!"

And that is the tale of my unexpected adventure along Bald Eagle Creek, and the tale of the hero husband who showed up and found the lost item. My brain went straight to the lyrics: "once was lost, but now am found," and so one of our soundtrack songs has to be this one: Amazing Grace!

I have two pictures, and I know this was a weird story for the day. Here are two songs: Amazing Grace, by Dan Vasc; and Hero, by Enrique Iglesias.

*Sidebar: My husband and I discussed it later, and my new blue tunes box (a Sandisk Clip Sport Plus) holds 32 GB of music. My old one (the much-beloved iPod Shuffle, which met its demise in July) held 2 GB, which was about 500 songs. So 32 GB would be about 8000 songs. I buy a lot of my individual songs on Amazon, and it's typically about $1.37 a song, including tax. So while the tunes box itself cost under $50, the music that's on it is EASILY worth around $10,000! Give or take Muskrat Love!  :-)