The word for when: the pull of the pioneer cemetery
There has to be a word for when….you’ve been thinking about something for weeks, can’t get it out of your mind…then just as you’ve forgotten all about it, it reappears in your life again.
Do our thoughts pull it back into our lives as though it were magnetized? Does our subconscious guide us to it? Both?
“I’d love to see that view again,” I thought, recalling the expanse of the Columbia River as seen from a small pioneer cemetery I visited long ago. From time to time I get a hunch or intuition to go someplace in particular. Usually the subconscious urging nudges me toward a thrift store where I miraculously find clothes that fit!
There was no urgent reason to return to the cemetery. Yet it kept popping up in my conscious mind. I could remember the view, and the small steeply sloped patch of grass outside the fence, and the overbuilt red gate on the driveway. I couldn’t remember the name of the cemetery, nor could I locate it again on Google Maps. I knew I could search online, but there was no pressing need.
Weeks passed. Eventually the place dropped out of my consciousness.
In early November 2020 I went for a sunny day drive up Interstate 5 and Highway 411 for no better reason than to cure cabin fever, find the Rose Valley Cemetery and go for a short…
