216. Benjamin, Knox County

This photo was much darker than the last.  I have a lighter but crappier one, too…

Haskell at least was a town of some size with a square.  Benjamin was tiny (we’re talking Paint Rock tiny) and through the darkness I could hear the horses neighing in the distance.  You can still feel the flat vastness around you even if you can’t actually see it.  It was a crazy hour of the morning, so I decided to just sit, meditate, and feel the stillness all around me.  But I’ll be honest: 20 minutes of meditation turned into 2 hours of napping.  But I woke up before the sunrise, so I decided to grab the cache.

Across the street is the Knox County Veterans Memorial.  I took a moment to look at the names etched in stone and then walked over to the appropriate tree to grab the cache.  The memorial stands so that the names of those past will be recorded and remembered and, as I looked at the cache log, I thought that perhaps these are our own little shadow memorial, too.  We write our names and make our marks so that others may know that we have passed this way.  No doubt we are drawn to cemeteries for the same reason.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that I probably should have waited five more minutes to take a brighter, clearer courthouse photo, but, again, chomping at the bit.  The whinnies carried off into the distance as I got back in motion.  The water droplets on my windshield glistened as the sun broke over the horizon and lux had actually fiat-ed by the time I set foot in…