Soul Rock Series

Today I returned to Fairmount to walk, to breathe, and to pay respect to those who have passed on. The cemetery has become more than a place of rest—it is a living altar, a field of transmissions. After several days of cleansing rain, the earth felt renewed, washed free of heaviness, and the morning sun broke through with a brilliance that carried promise. The air was crisp, the light soft, and everything shimmered with the sense of beginning again.

As I entered, I felt the rhythm of the place immediately. Fairmount doesn’t wait for permission—it speaks when it’s ready. The squirrels were already moving across the plots, darting and pausing with intention, their presence reminding me that memory is never lost, only hidden until the right time. 

Magpies and flickers gathered quietly, foraging in the grass, their subtle movements weaving a quiet chorus of persistence. Even the atmosphere itself seemed alive, filled with birdsong from Townsend solitaries and black-capped chickadees, their voices piercing the silence with soul resonance.

It was in this charged, luminous field that the deer appeared—majestic, innocent, unafraid—and later, where I was guided to leave a soul rock for David Ralston Williams, whose white stone stood out like a beacon among the darker markers of his family.

The atmosphere was alive, but it wasn’t only the weather or the stones that spoke. It was the animals who carried the transmissions, each one appearing with its own rhythm, its own message. Their presence turned the cemetery into a living field of symbols, and I began to listen—not just with my ears, but with my soul.

Squirrels: Guardians of Memory and Hidden Nourishment
At plot 111, squirrels were everywhere—darting, pausing, frolicking with a kind of sacred rhythm. They weren’t just playful; they were purposeful. I watched them carry rose buds in their mouths, burying food as if to remind me that nourishment can be hidden, stored, and remembered. 

Later, through my binoculars, I saw them bury croissant pieces, echoing what I had witnessed at home with peanuts. Their message was clear: what sustains us must sometimes be hidden until the right time to retrieve it. They were teaching me about patience, about trust in cycles, about the wisdom of storing soul food for later, and about the sacred act of remembering what we once buried.

Magpies and Flickers: Quiet Foragers, Subtle Messengers
At plot 95, magpies and northern flickers gathered, not loud or disruptive, but quietly foraging. Flickers usually drum, tapping out messages from the unseen, but today they were still, their presence more about grounding than calling. Magpies, often tricksters, were subdued, their sharp cries softened into quiet persistence. 

Together they whispered: not every message comes in thunder. Some transmissions arrive in subtle gestures, in the quiet act of foraging, in the persistence of presence. Their symbolism was about subtlety, about listening to what is beneath the noise, about trusting that even silence carries meaning. They reminded me that not all guidance is dramatic—sometimes it is gentle, steady, and waiting to be noticed.

The Deer: Innocence and Peaceful Passage
Rustling behind me revealed a young male deer stepping gracefully from the highline canal trail into the cemetery. He walked directly across plot 95, past Muffy Moorhead’s grave, unbothered by my presence. His eyes held innocence, his steps carried calm, and his body moved with quiet majesty. 

He was foraging, but he was also transmitting: move gently through thresholds, unafraid of the living or the dead. The deer embodied peace, reminding me that innocence is not naivety—it is trust. His passage across the graves was a benediction of calm, a reminder that the soul can walk unafraid, carrying innocence as strength, and that even in sacred spaces, gentleness is the truest power.

The Rabbit: Stillness Beside the Stones
Near the Moorheads, a rabbit sat quietly, unmoving, simply present. Rabbits often symbolize vulnerability and quickness, darting at the slightest sound, but today this one was still. Its calm presence beside the gravestones felt like a reminder: sometimes the most powerful act is to remain. 

The rabbit’s stillness balanced the deer’s movement, showing me that both motion and pause are sacred. It carried the message that vulnerability can be strength, that stillness can be protection, and that presence itself is a transmission. In its quiet watch, the rabbit reminded me that sometimes the soul’s deepest wisdom is found not in running, but in resting.

Solitaries and Chickadees: Soul Piercing Song
The Townsend solitaries and black-capped chickadees filled the air with song, weaving atmosphere into music. Their voices pierced the silence, not as background, but as soul sound. It was joy, but also invocation—song that carried through the cemetery like a ritual chant. 

Their message was about piercing heaviness with light, about reminding me that even in places of death, life sings. They taught me that song is not decoration—it is transmission. Their chorus was a soul mirror, showing that grief and joy can coexist, that silence can be filled with resonance, and that the living always sing to the dead, carrying memory forward in melody.

As the animals moved through the plots, their messages gathered into a chorus of innocence, patience, and trust. Yet Fairmount wasn’t finished speaking. My steps carried me toward a new path, into the military section, where the stones themselves began to transmit. It was there that I encountered David Ralston Williams, whose white memorial stood out like a beacon among the darker markers of his family.

I walked the path toward the military section, arriving at plot 32, a place I had not visited before. There, among the Wolgamott family stones, I found David Ralston Williams. Born November 28, 1907, and gone by January 1, 1909, his short life lasting just over a year.

Yet his stone spoke louder than many others. It was bright white, luminous against the backdrop of heavy, dark grey markers that surrounded it. His memorial was crowned with a carved tree trunk and a sheep—symbols layered with meaning. The tree trunk suggested a life cut short, a branch severed before it could grow tall. The sheep, gentle and innocent, carried echoes of sacrifice, purity, and the vulnerability of childhood.

The contrast was striking. His stone did not blend into the somber weight of his family’s markers—it stood out, radiant, almost defiant in its brightness. It felt as though his innocence had been preserved in stone, refusing to be overshadowed by the heaviness of lineage. I was moved by the way his memorial seemed to hold both fragility and strength, both loss and remembrance.

I left a soul rock for David, not simply as a gesture, but as a ritual of recognition. It was a way of saying: your brightness is not forgotten, your innocence is honored, your presence still speaks. In that act, I felt the field shift. His stone became more than a marker of death—it became a beacon of memory, a reminder that even the briefest lives can shine with enduring light.

The act of leaving a soul rock at David’s grave felt like a seal, a ritual of recognition. But the message of the day was larger than one stone, larger than one life. It was woven through fur, feather, and stone alike, carried by animals, by silence, and by the brightness of innocence preserved. Together they spoke a single transmission, layered and clear.

The Soul Message in Fur, Feather, and Stone

The animals and the grave together carried one transmission: innocence is not weakness—it is wisdom. Each presence spoke in its own way, weaving a chorus of reminders.

• The deer’s eyes held innocence, yet he walked calmly across the graves, unafraid of thresholds.
• The rabbit’s stillness was innocent, yet it anchored the field with quiet strength.
• The squirrels buried food, innocent in play, yet wise in survival and memory.
• The birds sang, innocent in joy, yet piercing in truth, filling silence with resonance.
• David’s white stone stood out, innocent in brightness, yet powerful in memory and lineage.

Together they revealed that innocence is not naivety—it is trust. Trust in cycles, in silence, in song, in brightness that remains even when surrounded by shadow. Innocence is the courage to walk gently, to pause without fear, to sing even in grief. Today’s Soul Rock was not only about leaving a stone—it was about receiving this transmission: innocence is sacred. Innocence is strength. Innocence is what allows us to see with our own eyes.

And yet, even this transmission was not the end. Fairmount itself rose as oracle, holding the animals, the stones, and my own steps within its field. It reminded me that the cemetery is not only a place of remembrance—it is a living altar, a layered mirror, a convergence of voices that continue to speak long after the rituals are complete.

The Cemetery as Oracle

Fairmount rose today not as a cemetery, but as an oracle. The rain had washed its pathways clean, the sun draped its stones in light, and the animals carried breath into its silence. It was no longer simply a resting place—it was a layered altar, a convergence of voices woven from fur, feather, and stone.

Wisdom did not linger only in inscriptions carved by human hands; it moved in the living presences that crossed the plots. Stones turned their backs to redirect my gaze inward. Birds pierced the air with song, reminding me that joy survives even in the shadow of grief. A single white stone gleamed, luminous against its lineage, whispering that innocence endures.

Fairmount did not speak in answers—it spoke in transmissions. It asked me to listen differently, to trust what rises in silence, to honor what is hidden beneath the soil of memory. Each step among the graves became more than a walk—it became a threshold, a passage into my own becoming.

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It was the first big snow, and Fairmount lay under a thick blanket of white. The ground was pure and untouched, the gravestones capped with careful layers of snow as if Mother Nature herself had showered them with purity. Snow is silence, but it is also covering—an act of care, a softening of grief. It felt like the cemetery had been wrapped in a quilt, each grave tucked in for winter rest.

As I hiked through the snow, the crunch beneath my boots became a rhythm, a heartbeat against the hush. The air was crisp, the sky muted, and the field felt alive with presence. Snow is impermanent, yet it lingers long enough to remind us that purity and grief can coexist. Stones and snow together mark continuity: one melts, the other endures.

Catherine Smith’s Grave (Plot 17)

I came upon a towering gravestone, over six feet tall, weathered and brown with age. Its cream-colored plaque stood out, though worn and faded, the words nearly erased by time. The base resembled a clocktower, etched with leaves, while the top was carved into the form of a tree. It was a child’s grave, and the symbolism was unmistakable: a tree cut short, a life that never reached maturity.

The inscription read: In memory of Catherine Smith, daughter of A.V.C. Smith, born in Scotland Nov 13, 1870, and dide Oct 27, 1876. The misspelling—dide—felt haunting, as if even language faltered in the face of such loss. She was only six years old, with her whole life ahead of her.

Her family had come from Scotland, likely drawn by Denver’s mining boom or the promise of the railroads. In the 1870s, Denver was transforming from a frontier town into a bustling city. Immigrants arrived seeking opportunity, but children were especially vulnerable. Illnesses like scarlet fever, diphtheria, and pneumonia claimed many young lives. Catherine’s grave bore witness to that fragility.

Had she lived, Catherine would have grown up in a city on the cusp of change. She might have seen the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad expand, watched the Colorado State Capitol rise in the 1890s, and attended one of Denver’s early public schools. She might have walked Larimer Street, alive with wagons and shops, and seen electricity light the city’s nights. Instead, her life ended before these milestones unfolded.

I left a stone upon her grave. Stones are permanence against weathering, a vow that even as inscriptions fade, memory endures. Her gravestone may be tattered and worn, but her soul lives on. The stone I placed became a marker of continuity, a reminder that lineage does not vanish even when life is brief.

Garfield and James Kyffin’s Grave (Plot 18)

Further along, I found a small grave with two names: brothers Garfield Kyffin and James Kyffin. Garfield was born October 7, 1891, and died November 6, 1891—only one month of life. James was born May 7, 1897, and died the same day. Two brothers, both gone in infancy.

Their names carried weight. Garfield, likely named after President James Garfield, assassinated in 1881, reflected hope and continuity. James, a biblical name, carried lineage and tradition. Yet both names became epitaphs rather than futures.

By the 1890s, Denver had grown rapidly into a bustling urban center. The population swelled from thousands to over 100,000, but infrastructure lagged behind. Crowded neighborhoods, poor sanitation, and outbreaks of disease made infant survival precarious. Nationally, nearly one in five children died before age five, and Denver reflected that grim reality.

The Kyffin brothers’ deaths were part of this broader pattern. Garfield lived only a month, James only a day. Their short lives highlight the fragility of infants in a city where epidemics like influenza, cholera, and measles swept through households, and medical knowledge was limited. Families often relied on home remedies or overworked physicians, and infant mortality was heartbreakingly common.

Had Garfield lived, he might have grown up in the bustle of Denver’s expansion, seen the Capitol completed in 1895, and perhaps attended school alongside other children of the city’s growing population. James, born in 1897, would have come of age in the dawn of the 20th century, witnessing Denver’s transformation into a modern metropolis with electric lights, streetcars, and cultural celebrations. Their futures were full of possibility, yet their lives ended before they could take their first steps into that world.

I wondered how their mother coped with such loss. To lose one child is unbearable; to lose two, both so young, is a grief beyond words. Stones left upon their grave became surrogate milestones—marking birthdays, first steps, futures they never lived. Each stone is a gesture of remembrance, a way to cope with the unbearable by marking presence in the absence.

Losing a child is the hardest loss, not only because of the rupture it creates in a family but because of what it represents symbolically. Children embody possibility. They are the carriers of lineage, the promise of continuity, the living vessels of innocence and hope. When a child dies, it is not only the loss of one life—it is the loss of futures, of generations, of dreams that never had the chance to unfold.

In the 1800s, this grief was woven into daily life. Families often buried infants and young children, their gravestones scattered across Fairmount like echoes of fragility. Each stone marks not only a death but a silence in the communal story. Catherine Smith’s tree cut short, Garfield and James Kyffin’s names etched into stone before they could speak a word—these are reminders that grief is not just personal, but collective.

To lose a child is to lose the symbolic future: the laughter that would have filled homes, the footsteps that would have carried lineage forward, the wisdom that would have matured with time. It is to lose the continuity of story, the unfolding of possibility. Stones left upon children’s graves become anchors for the living, a way to cope with the unbearable by marking presence in the absence. Each stone says: you were here, you mattered, your silence is remembered.

The Soul Rock Offering and Fairmount as Oracle

Catherine Smith. Garfield Kyffin. James Kyffin. Three children, three short lives, two stones left as offerings. Their graves form a chorus of silence, yet the stones upon them form a chorus of remembrance.

Snow covered their graves like a blanket, softening the harshness of loss. Stones marked their presence like anchors, ensuring they are not forgotten. Together, snow and stone became symbols of care and continuity.

Fairmount rose today not as a cemetery, but as an oracle. The children’s graves spoke not only of fragility but of transmission. They asked me to listen differently—to hear absence as presence, to honor silence as teaching, to carry forward what was cut short. The oracle did not offer answers; it offered transmissions. It whispered that grief is sacred witness, that innocence endures even when life is brief, and that lineage is honored through remembrance.

Final Vow

When we visit, we can speak these words as offering:

I am the one who remembers the children of the 1800s.
I am the one who leaves stones as anchors of memory.
I am the one who honors innocence as sacred, even when life is brief.
I am the one who listens to silence as transmission.
I am the one who carries forward futures that never came to be.
I am the one who walks Fairmount as oracle, letting grief become vow, and vow become offering.

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It was Christmas Eve, and I felt the pull to go somewhere sacred. Not festive, not bright, not loud—sacred. Fairmount called me—not with sound, but with presence. There are days when the cemetery feels like a place of rest, and days when it feels like a place of revelation. This was the latter.

The snow from the last storm lingered only in faint shadow patches, melting back into the earth under the unseasonable heat. Denver had been breaking records all week—seventies in December, the news calling it a “hot winter.” The ground was damp and open, breathing beneath a veil that no longer felt wintry but strangely out of season, almost tender in its confusion. 

The air was warm on my skin, the sun bright and sharp, and the cemetery shimmered with a light that felt more like late spring than Christmas Eve. A luminous, uncanny brightness—the kind that makes everything look touched by spirit, the kind that makes you feel watched over.

I wandered into a section I had never explored before, where the stones were older, weathered, and worn. The names carved into them belonged to people born in the early 1800s—people who lived in a Denver that barely existed, people who walked dirt roads and lit their homes with oil lamps, people whose stories had long since slipped into silence. Their stones rose from the earth like echoes, like breaths caught in time.

That’s when I saw them: Isidora Buttrick Cowan, aged 19 years, 10 months, and 21 days, and Little Edna Cowan, aged 4 months and 19 days. Their graves stood side by side—one tall and solemn, the other small and tender. A mother and her infant daughter, bound in stone, bound in silence, bound in a story cut short.

Isidora’s stone belonged to her family, draped with carved mourning cloth. Edna’s bore the same motif, softened by time. A stone child’s shoe rested atop the smaller grave. An open book with a key adorned the larger one. Symbols of story and passage, of innocence and journey. Symbols that felt like messages.

I did the math:
Edna was born July 5, 1872.
Isidora died July 13—just nine days after giving birth.
Little Edna lived until November 23.

They never shared a Christmas together.
They never shared a winter.
They barely shared a breath.

And yet here they were—mother and child—held together in stone, held together in memory, held together in a field that still remembers.

To stand before graves from the 1870s is to stand inside a different world. Denver was a city in transition—raw, ambitious, unsteady. The Kansas Pacific Railroad had recently arrived, linking the city to the East and igniting a population boom. New neighborhoods were forming, though they were little more than clusters of wooden houses and muddy streets. Curtis Park, Whittier, and Capitol Hill were just beginning to take shape.

But beneath the excitement of growth was a harsher truth: life was fragile.

Medicine lagged far behind. Childbirth was perilous, and postpartum infections like puerperal fever claimed many young mothers days after delivery. Doctors didn’t yet understand germ theory. Instruments were reused without sterilization. Midwives did what they could with limited knowledge. A fever could rise suddenly and take a woman within hours.

Infants were even more vulnerable. Pneumonia, cholera, influenza, contaminated water, malnutrition—any of these could sweep through a household and take a child before the family even understood what was happening. Denver’s water system was rudimentary. Winters were brutal. Heating was inconsistent. Families relied on home remedies, and physicians were few and overworked.

Isidora Buttrick Cowan died on July 13, 1872, after a short illness. She was just shy of twenty. Her obituary described her as an affectionate wife and beloved daughter, mourned by a young husband and aged parents. Her body was taken to the Episcopal church, where a large congregation gathered for a solemn funeral service and a chanted dirge. Then she was brought to Denver for burial.

The obituary did not name the illness. It did not mention childbirth. But the timing—just nine days after Edna’s birth—suggests a postpartum complication, perhaps a fever or infection that rose quickly and could not be stopped.

Edna, left motherless at nine days old, lived only four months more. Her death was not isolated. It was part of a broader pattern of vulnerability in a city still learning how to care for its people.

And yet, even in that harshness, families carved beauty into stone. They marked graves with symbols of hope, of story, of passage. They honored their dead with care, even when life gave them little time.

The Buttrick Lineage: A Family That Left Footprints in Stone and Story

The more I read, the more I realized that the Buttrick family was not ordinary for their time. They left behind traces—obituaries, records, carved symbols—the kind of visibility rarely found in the 1870s. 

Lowell Buttrick, Isidora’s father, was a known figure in Georgetown, part of the early wave of settlers who helped shape the mining town during Colorado’s silver boom. His name appeared in community records, and his daughter’s funeral drew a large congregation, a sign of respect and standing.

Isidora was one of several children. Her sisters—Eugenia Demel Court Buttrick Kerber Maxson Moody (1845–1895), Ellen M. Buttrick Fleming (1846–1896), and Irene G. Buttrick Schormoyer (1851–1946)—each lived lives that stretched far beyond the mining camps and frontier hardships of their youth. 

Their names carried through marriages, through towns, through decades. They lived into adulthood, some into old age, witnessing the transformation of Colorado from raw frontier to established statehood.

And yet, among these long‑lived sisters, Isidora’s life was the briefest—a bright flame extinguished at nineteen. Her daughter Edna’s life was even shorter. Their stones stand as the tender center of a larger lineage, a reminder that even in families with long arcs, some stories end too soon. The Buttrick sisters carried the family forward, but Plot 9 holds the chapter that was cut short.

To stand before these graves is to feel the weight of a family’s history—the resilience of the sisters, the grief of the father, the heartbreak of a young husband, and the silence of a mother and child whose lives barely overlapped. Their lineage did not vanish. It rippled outward. And yet, here in Fairmount, the story returns to its quietest point: a mother, a baby, and the winter light that still remembers them.

Normally, the Canada geese gather on the flat plots. They move like a tide across the open fields, rarely venturing into the older sections where the stones rise tall and uneven. But not today. On Christmas Eve, they surrounded Plot 9.

It was startling at first—so many geese in a place they rarely occupy. They stood in a loose circle around the graves, their bodies forming a kind of boundary, a kind of protection. Their honking echoed through the warm air, not loud but steady, like a chant.

Magpies perched nearby, their black‑and‑white feathers flashing like mourning cloth. They hopped from stone to stone, pausing on the edges of the Cowan graves as if reading the inscriptions. Their presence carried both shadow and light, both mischief and message.

Squirrels darted between stones, playful and persistent. They moved with purpose, weaving through the council of birds, stitching the field with motion and memory. Then they would stop and stand proudly on the stones, staking their claim in history.

It was not random.
It was ritual.

The animals gathered with intention, forming a council around mother and child.

• The Geese: Guardianship and lineage.
• The Magpies: Duality and transmission.
• The Squirrels: Continuity and care.

Together, they formed a living scripture. Plot 9 became their axis, their altar. It was not spectacle but ceremony.

Plot 9 as Oracle

The stones were weathered, but the transmission was clear. The child’s shoe. The open book. The key. Symbols of journey, story, and passage.

The shoe spoke of innocence, of steps never taken, of a path cut short.
The book spoke of story, of lineage, of a life interrupted mid‑sentence.
The key spoke of passage, of thresholds, of doors that open beyond this world.

I did not seek answers. I stood in witness. The animals carried the message. The warm and bright sun softened the grief. The carvings spoke of lineage interrupted, of innocence unfulfilled.

Plot 9 became oracle—not through voice, but through convergence.
Not through explanation, but through presence.
Not through clarity, but through resonance.

The field itself whispered: grief is not just rupture, it is transmission.

The Offering of Soul Rock Stones

I had not planned to leave stones. But like all Soul Rock offerings, they happen when they are meant to. The pull rose quietly, the way true offerings do — not from intention, but from recognition. The animals had already begun the ritual, circling Plot 9 with guardianship and grace, but something in me knew the moment wasn’t complete until I placed something of my own.

I chose two stones — one for Isidora, one for Edna.
Two markers for two lives bound together in love and loss.
Two anchors for a story cut short.

The geese held guardianship as I placed them.
The magpies carried transmission.
The squirrels stitched continuity around us.

The animals offered presence.
I offered stone.
Together, it became a shared altar — motion and stillness, breath and symbol, wing and weight.

Their convergence was vow enough.
My stones were witness enough.
The offering belonged to all of us — human and animal, past and present, lineage and field.

My role was reverence.

Final Vow: Cemetery as Oracle

Fairmount spoke through animals on Christmas Eve. Plot 9 became a living altar, where mother and child were held in guardianship and grace. The sun did not conceal—it revealed. The carvings did not mourn—they transmitted. The ritual was complete without my hand, yet the vow was mine: to listen, to witness, to remember. 

To carry forward Isidora and Edna’s story—not in words alone, but in lineage, presence, and offering. Fairmount rose as oracle, teaching that grief can be softened by the sun, that innocence can be honored through witness, and that remembrance is not always stone but sometimes feather, sometimes paw, sometimes silence.

When we walk among these graves, we can speak these words as offering:
We are the ones who listen when lineage falters.
We are the ones who honor innocence as transmission.
We are the ones who let silence become teaching, and presence become vow.
We are the ones who carry forward stories cut short, letting carvings and animals restore them.
We are the ones who walk Fairmount as oracle, where grief becomes witness and remembrance becomes offering.
We are the ones who see the child’s shoe and the open book and know the key still turns.

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