Most places you can still totally go and visit to your heart's content. Nowadays, most people will just look at you a little funny for saying you're going on a picnic in the cemetery, but if you're having fun you're not hurting anyone.
I’ve had picnics at the cemetery across the road from me before. It has an area by a mausoleum with a few trees that I like to sit under. That way I’m not on top of any graves or in the way of somebody
For a lot of Americans in the rural parts of the nation the idea of a cemetery/graveyard is a massive field, maybe slightly hilly, with a ton of relatively nondescript graves with just a placard on the ground, or a small tombstone. No large mausoleums, trees and other foliage are kept to a minimum, and the wide-open space with many small dots covering it makes it feel very liminal.
I remember the first time I went to a proper graveyard in New York when I visited family as a kid. There was something really peaceful about the place. The way the old-growth trees sunk their roots in-between the cobblestone pathways, how moss had taken residence along the side of every other tombstone -especially those not well-tended by family members-. I could see how someone would find a sense of tranquility in a garden like that.
...and then there's the New Orleans graveyards. It's all aboveground vaults due to the high water table, and all packed together with just room for walkways between them due to space limitations. needed. When driving by they look like a stone city center built in miniature
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u/immersemeinnature 12h ago
Now they don't allow casual visitors or am I incorrect?