Pedaling the backroads of Montana

The small one-hundred year old cemetery I bicycled by was positioned for all the departed to face south and take in the Beartooth Mountain range with an unobstructed view from on top of the bluff. The bluff overlooked Rock Creek.

The sound of the creek rushing over rocks was a lullaby that sung uninterrupted to the infant twins that were buried in the corner of the cemetery.

Their burial site was surrounded by no one. For some reason they occupied a space away from the thirty or so people buried in the quaint fenced yard only the locals would find. Parents should not have to bury their young, especially infant twins. The tombstone read 1921. Absent of a date range. Their lives came and went as the four seasons of the mountains come and go within the year.

I rode my bicycle past the headstone at first until my eye caught the names of the parents the infants belonged too. I hit my brakes and rode back to the fence line that separated us. Their names where James and Margaret Barry, they too have passed.

The children were alone, but never lonely. The sun, moon, stars, stream, deer and mountains watch over them day and night.

If I had been in a car instead of on my bicycle, I would have rushed by.

The cemetery sobered my mind from the trivial matters that can derail a moment in time. I am alive and pedaling a bike with the sun in my face, a view of the mountains on the horizon, the sound of the water as it rushes over the rocks below me.

I witnessed the seasons come and go. I bicycle through them. Today, I am alive and thankful.