Mt. Hope and St. Anthony Cemeteries

I can’t lie; this place is cool only because my 4^th great grandfather and his family are here.
It’s a very small and quaint cemetery located at the end of The City of Pescadero. You can see by looking at the end of the street past the church on the left.
It’s worth a stop by and look around if you are in the area checking things out.
I am glad they take care of this place and a big thank you to the volunteers who do.

There are some places in this world that will get beneath your skin and then sink so deeply into your bones that they almost touch the raw marrow. This is exactly what it felt like when first I made my pilgrimage here: to the twin linked cemeteries that connect Pescadero’s historic past to the living present. The Mount Hope and Saint Anthony cemeteries are made up of to-​be-​continued stories. They are not finished yet. They have not been forsaken. No, they are very much still kicking. They exist so that the local townspeople might have a peaceful place to bury their dead, from nineteenth-​century founding fathers and wizened Mexican grandmothers to fallen American soldiers and deceased tiny toddlers of the new millennium. But — in a grand and selfless act of community generosity — they have chosen to open these special sites to the general public to see and explore the sparsely-​tended grounds in (hopefully) reverent silence.
I have read previous Unilocal reviews for downtown Main Street in Pescadero in which out-​of-​towners describe taking their expensive artichoke breads, their fancy goat cheeses, and their spicy al pastor tacos up here to snack on while savoring million-​dollar Kodak moments from its exquisite barren hillsides. The dead do not mind it that much, I guess. After all, many of them have things of their own to remind them of the lives they once had lived: unopened beer cans, Coke bottles, energy drinks, candy bars, cigarette cartons, motorcycle helmets, teddy bears, favorite toys, and dessicated but still fine flowers, a few of which are made of washed-​out, faded plastic. All sorts of mementos and parting gifts are scattered lovingly next to their gravestones: a telling sign that Pescaderans use this space to communicate with the old and the newly departed. That’s what a cemetery is to me: a reminder of the universality of death, and that’s scary to contemplate. But it’s also an affirmation of life, which is a comforting thing to have and to hold, sometimes.
On any given Sunday, flocks of camera-​toting tourists come to spend a few blissful hours in Pescadero and its environs. Most of them will never make it past Duarte’s and Arcangeli’s and Harley Farms. Those are nice, too, but consider a drive further up the street next time. Just head due north to the start of Old Stage Road to walk the lines of the town’s honored dead. Even if you are alone, as we were, you will still be surrounded by very good company. And then your getaway-​from-​work road trip down Highway One to cruise the Central Coast could well become something more, something that will change you: forever, and for the better. Real people still live around these parts, you know. They are not all just day-​trippers passing by at highway speeds. And that means that someday they also will die — either here nearby or somewhere else off in the distance of an unfamiliar street or far-​flung foreign shore. And then, just maybe, they will come back to this place to find a comfortable home amidst the dust and remains of their ancestors. And then they too can rest for a spell before the spirits are ready to move on.
Because we never really die — totally and completely, I mean — as long as we are not forgotten. Here, in these beautiful, stark, and sweeping landscapes surrounded by rich farm fields, rolling grasses, wet marshes, dense redwoods, thick fogs, and stiff ocean breezes, no one gets left behind. Or forgotten. It all stays in the same frame, forever spinning in repeated cycles of birth, life, death, and renewal: like one of those pinwheels I saw placed next to the modest headstone of a young girl whose body lies here buried but whose soul (should such a thing exist) might well be fluttering in the wind somewhere, racing the clouds pell-​mell pitter-​pat as she tumbles and rolls like thunder down from the mountain, into the wooded canyons, past the deserted streets of town right up to the water’s edge, to play wildly and joyfully amidst the bright summer sun, the fast rolling waves, and the soft shifting sand that squishes underneath her tiny brown feet: as she liked so very much to do with her mommy and daddy and younger twin brothers when the weather on the coast was perfectly right (which was not very often).
Perhaps this was the case. It’s a nice thought were it to be true. But if not, I hope that the little dead girl and her pretty pink pinwheel won’t mind. I miss her already, even if I never really knew her. I close my eyes and she is by my side, running recklessly and without restraint through the rows of gravestones with laughter in her eyes and grass stains on her knees, so happy still to be a part of the living for one day more, for one minute longer, for one final and fading moment before it becomes too dark outside to see and playtime is over. Goodbye, little girl! Next time, I’ll bring a shiny bright new pinwheel to replace the one you will by then have lost.