Cemeteries tell you about a people. How they die, how the living continue to think after them.

Italian cemeteries are a different affair from their American counterparts. Freestanding crypts and family chambers are much more common, distinguishing the haves from the have-nots even in death. Whereas we tend to keep them as repositories for the dead, the Italians have a near church-like state where one could conceivably go and meditate or pray over one's fallen ancestors.

As in life, the dead reside close to one another. You can imagine their bony hands reaching out and clasping those of their neighbor on those nights the ground gets unbearably cold to rest in.

I'd seen the cemetery from the gondola and was immediately interested. Whole town histories are contained within the simple walls of the cemetery. You get a very intimate sense to who these people you are living among are.

I can't imagine such a thing as a new cemetery in Italia, but here we are. Certainly seems like its reserved for those who died in the last fifty years or so.

Funny place for a cemetery, the edge of the overflow parking lot rests just beyond these walls. Rather than a peaceful sleep, those interred here must hear the grinding racket of a successful ski operation.

Not the sort of place I'd choose to spend eternity.

These are not the sorts of thing one puts on a tourist map, though I would suss there to be a second one out here.

One lady makes her rounds, makes her blessings and is surprised to see me here, but not unwelcomingly so. I always feel awkward -- these are not my friends and relatives. What business do I have here? Steal a few photographs, of course. Impress my friends back home.

Yeah, maybe a little. More because these places always seem to expand me. They are transformative.

I have a few minutes before my skis blow up down at Celso sport, may as well see the countryside a bit.

That's why I'm here.

She pays her respects and leaves and I find that there isn't really a good way to picture the dead with the living mountain behind them, and thats OK.

I think that this is certainly a setting for a story, the sort where you start a conversation with someone as to why they are here, perhaps in broken languages that has you communicating in near comic sentences.

I am here because it is pretty.

I am here for my grandma.

Oh, did she die recently?

No, several years ago.

That sort of dialog.

At the entrance they have a chapel and what looks like maybe an office to keep an eye on things. An automatic dispenser vends candles in small, medium and large for a small exchange of euro.

The grounds-keeper talks to some old guy out front and I have the feeling that if they weren't waiting for me then they certainly were using me as an excuse to keep from doing whatever they needed to be doing.

I vanish through the parking lot, back the way I came.