Highgate Cemetery-East.

Sunny days in London are reserved for the fields and parks. British homegirls Slim and Excess strip down and absorb the good vitamin, long neglected. I should’ve done the same. I’m a mesomorph and when kept in check I’m quite the specimen. I am in check, which begs the question; what was I doing in a cemetery rather than a park on such a sunny day?

When Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn caught the murder of the grave robbin’ good doctor, the night was dark and still. When Marty McFly found his father’s gravestone in the alternate present (Part 2), the night was dark and stormy. Fictionally, the night is considered ideal conditions for the venturing into graveyards. I don’t know if I’d commit to Highgate Cemetery at night; not under the harsh and unbound parameters of reality.

The perimeter of the grounds was but a sample of what lied within. Granted the vegetation spared an occasional opportunity for a minor glimpse,  it wasn’t until I was inside that I realised how truly lost I could find myself.

Nostalgia’s not the right word. Neither is mysticism.

I thought of hopping the fence to get in, but surrounded by school children and the sinisterly rich, I lost my nerve. With 40 minutes available and the clock ticking, I took advantage of the slowly setting sun, styling the ominous scene similarly to that of the European world, yet still strangely unique to the UK.

If I made the effort I could’ve been there moments after dawn, crudely uprooting myself from the Dalston lifestyle of which I’ve become accustomed. Where, waking later than 10am to get what the rest of the world’d call brunch or a punctual lunch, Dalston would call a sparrow’s breakfast.

I fear too long in a place so haunting would leave most entirely haunted.

I entered Highgate Cemetery with the frame of mind of a small child, or a location scout to a fantasy film. I purposefully read nothing of the historical location save the directions of how to get there from Hampstead Heath. I knew nothing of who was buried there, how far the cemetery dated back nor the sheer size of the obscure theme park. I had fallen through a hole born from worn away floorboards of an Elm St mansion and landed here. I was ignorant of the serious, crafting my time into an adventure.

Like my limited vision from the outside, my view from within rarely gave me an awareness of a surrounding world. Through such dense and cryptic ground cover, manipulative root systems and overbearing branches thick with the harsh green hues of spring growth, it was as if the cemetery’s concealment was on purpose. The flora of the scene had bent and broken, breaking stone, and belittling structural balance, as if brokering the memory of the fallen in accordance with a malicious agenda.

Chilling obituaries detailing blunt brief facts, birth dates and their consequential day of departure; the inscriptions ensnared me. Stones listed children, teens and twenty somethings of stunted lifespans below parents who had the foresight to purchase sublevels of lots to accommodate the entire family.

Chiseled iconography; an “S” with three vertical lines through it’s body, indicating either a possession of mass wealth, or Greek heritage… I can’t be sure.

Thick trunked trees claimed victory over the tombstones like tyrants of war. Raising blood drenched hands to the heavens, branding boot prints on the breast of foes overcome. Hardened roots pierced stone much like time pierces integrity, delving deep into the assuredly fertile black soil.

The stone markers bartered all the same. The smaller the stone the less significant it’s position. Where trees stood tall, giant and thick in number, shrubbery hid testaments to humble paths. Those lives that helped to define future paths, there sites were still known by the conscious living. The Karl Marx‘s and the Douglas Adams‘ were still recognised, revered and consequently their resting places preserved. The small growth, dutifully performing and ongoing service to the grandeur of the looming ogres who’d lived through the rise and fall of all. It was in their majesty that the will of nature was governed.

The closing bell rang in ear shot of all that could still be saved. The visiting numbers made haste in their return to the black gates, before the black of night fell like a blanket over the burial grounds.

Angels, saints and gargoyles guarded the relics of the gothic years and up, despite lack of limb or decapitation. They were the works of fine masonry, and would guard dutifully, defying age and vandalism. The distinguished shadows under strong stone features began to dilute, seeping into a sea of shadow, soon to devour the day.

In the final moments of my adventure I spotted a grave blessed with the intense electric purple of Columbines. Lots adjacent and surrounding were swamped with sprawling weeds suffocating growth. Yet this particular stone was untouched by blight and rather rewarded with bold, astonishing colour.

What life was lived in such religious accordance with the aspirations of Victorian society as well as Nature’s will, that it’s gravesite was permitted to defy entropy and remain an untarnished tribute in the darkest corner of Highgate Cemetery?

Why this marker and few others?

I was fortunate that the power battle between the faculties of natural and artificial growth had not yet ransacked the centre paths. It was here that the sun still shone. In the darker confines, in the brightest of the day, I was sure that green would not give way to light. The arc of the lonely star stole a sight of these gravestones twice in it’s daily summer routine, rewarding the memories of societies pasts with beams of blue and gold in the magical hours of dawn and dusk.

Exiting Highgate Cemetery, I returned to the pinnacle of natural height in the heart of Hampstead Heath. Among the others watching over London town that evening, I made silent remark to the splendour of one of humanities finest cities, despite knowing that no matter how high the buildings rose, their architects’ final and eternal hurdle would be their establishment in history, of which the powers of nature-forever patient-would, in time, witness the burial of all memory, as it did the body.