Family history and the challenging photograph

I have been to Arkansas exactly three times. The first was in 1996 with my grandma. We visited her brother, uncle JD, and he drove us around the towns they grew up in. We visited their grandparents graves, and drove past a field that JD waved at and said, "there's a cemetery out there. We've got family in it but I don't know how. It's all overgrown. I have been meaning to get out there and trim it back but haven't gotten to it." I immediately volunteered to help, thinking the grave inscriptions would unlock family secrets, too young to yet know that's not how it works. "No," my grandma said. "It's full of snakes, ticks, and briars."

The second visit was in 2003 for JD's funeral. Now my dad was in the car with us as we drove the same route to tour the town. Again, a finger pointed at the old cemetery and it didn't look as overgrown as I remembered. I asked if we could go look. No. Snakes. Ticks. 

My third visit, ten years later. The grandma who kept saying no has passed and the Internet produced a list of everyone buried there, giving me the opportunity to figure out how they were related. I wonder if my great uncle would have been impressed to hear it was his great great grandfather and mother? Add two more greats for me, and I'm impressed. This man died when my great grandma was six months old. 

I needed the GPS coordinates to find it. I double checked with the landowners it was ok for me to go through their cow pasture. The lady said she'd forgotten it was there. "No one's visited it." I think the newest grave is from 1951 but most are before 1900. It was as overgrown as JD feared and then some. I had tennis shoes on, shorts, and ample amounts of bug spray. I carried a long knife with me, thinking I might have to cut some weeds back. I had no idea. 

The cows had torn the barbed fence down on one side, and I saw no other entrance. There were several flat elevated stones that had crushed, probably under the weight of a cow. I peered anxiously into the holes, expecting skeletons that looked like me, but only dirt. Other stones had been shifted by what I can only assume were fox holes. I knew these were the graves of distant aunts, uncles, and children, but the cemetery namesake, my gggg grandfather had a tall stone toward the middle. I was scratched, bleeding, and sweating by the time I found it, my shoelaces sealed in their knots by the briars, my shorts covered in the things, but the mulberries smelled sweet and there weren't many spiders, and no sign of snakes. 

Then the question of the photo. I had not considered the overgrown plants from 1996 might be trees by now. There was no shot in the direction I intended. After much hemming and hawing, I saw another shot if I moved the trailer and took down the more fragile mulberry trees. I also retrieved the World's Dullest Hatchet, which seemed to anger the trees more than cut them. But within a short enough time I had bent or broken enough of them to see the grave. 

It isn't what you expect for your ancestors. I don't know if any older ones even have grave markers. My relationship to these people seems entirely abstract. This man was 48 when the Civil War broke out. What would he think of me driving around, the whole country at my fingertips. 

Before I left, I did my best to try to repair the fence. It really needs new barbed wire. I don't know who is responsible for that, the landowners or the relatives. But I twisted some ends together and righted one of the posts; the other was too heavy so I did my best to string the wire across it. I don't know if it's enough for a couple more generations or not.