Established in 1843, this site is perhaps the oldest cemetery in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Evergreen Cemetery outside of Eagle River offers many photographic opportunities in the winter, with stark contrasts between fences, headstones, and wrought iron. According to Tom Harper’s Gravestone above, he was killed by a falling rock in the Phoenix Mine at the age of 19 in 1876. Copper mining in the Keweenaw was dangerous and very hard work. Today, the Upper Peninsula is famous for Pasties (beef and potato filling baked in a folded dough crust), which were originally brought to the Upper Peninsula by immigrants from Cornwall England in the 1800’s. They were a common staple for miners who would bring them for a hot meal underground. They are sometimes referred to as Cornish Pasties. My family has carried forward the recipe from my maternal great grandparents who settled in the Keweenaw from Montreal Quebec in the 1890s. As we are expecting temperatures into the 30’s on Sunday, I will be making another trip with the Hasselblad and Harman Titan Pinhole to further capture images in the land of my forefathers.
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island