The Sphinx and Mt. Auburn Cemetery

"It seems as if Nature had formed the spot with a distinct idea in view of its being a resting place for her children, where wearied & disappointed they might stretch themselves beneath the spreading cypress & close their eyes "calmly as to a nights repose or flowers at set of sun."

- Emily Dickinson, 1846, describing Mount Auburn in a letter to a friend

This spring when the weather turns nice and you're looking for a new place to explore, try spending a day at the Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge Massachusetts. That's right, spend a day exploring a cemetery.

Actually, the first thing to know is that Mt. Auburn is not just "a cemetery". In 1831 it became the United States' first rural cemetery, fashioned after those that had begun cropping up in Europe 30 years before. The main ideas of rural cemeteries are that they aren't associated with any church and are therefore nondenominational, and (more importantly to me) they are created as a garden style public park that is meant to be enjoyed. Mt. Auburn Cemetery features 170 acres of of roads and pathways that total more than 10 miles in length, and is adorned with over 700 species of trees and thousand of bushes. It also features some of the most magnificent tombstones, memorials, and chapels I've found in New England.

These are all impressive facts which Tina and I knew very little of when we visited Mt. Auburn in the summer of 2016, we only knew the cemetery was said to have some pretty cool gravestones. So while in Boston one day we decided it would be a good place to eat lunch while maybe spending a half hour or so checking out. We arrived and quickly learned our mistake. Mt. Auburn is not the type of place you can just "check out" for half an hour, it's the type of place you need to spend the day and experience.

Here's an example of us putting ourselves in a too rushed a position to properly enjoy Mt. Auburn. Flipping through my pictures I found this beautifully carved dog and I don't even know if he is overseeing a single grave or a family plot. If we'd not been so pressed for time and had stopped to look, I'd not only know his story but probably would have a half-dozen pictures of Tina scruffing his ears and telling him he's "such a good boy!"

This angel statue, which could be the highlight of many other cemeteries, almost gets lost in all the beauty Mt. Auburn has to offer.

Our greatest surprise of the day was that Mt. Auburn is not only a cemetery, but a memorial park as well. We found this out coming around a corner and seeing this giant sphinx. I was slightly bummed it wasn't guarding the mummified corpse of some Egyptian Pharaoh, but instead it is a civil war memorial. Off the top of my head I don't recall what role Egypt played in our country's civil war, but it was amazing nonetheless.

Another memorial is the Washington Tower, named after our first president and located on the highest knoll within Mt. Auburn. Climb the 62 feet to its top platform and you'll be rewarded with an overview of the cemetery and the Boston skyline in the distance.

Beyond all these amazing sights, Mt Auburn is still a cemetery and they do still frown on certain things. Like grave robbing. Tina.

I have dozens more pictures of the spectacular things at Mt. Auburn which I actually forced myself to withhold from this post. I wouldn't want to spoil all the fun, and instead encourage you to visit the cemetery and experience it all for yourself.

Links:
Directions to Mt. Auburn Cemetery