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Dear
Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery,
Yesterday dawned with clear cold skies for our grueling session of prepping the cemetery for the canine forensics team coming on Wednesday. Regional Parks had our tool trailer perfectly stocked with lots of tarps, rakes, loppers, etc, and brought us the BIG dump truck. We needed every inch of that dump truck for filling with the mounds of cemetery floor debris we collected.
Eleven of us gathered promptly at 9 am, weed whackers, mowers, and trimmers in hand. Our aim was to knock down vegetation on the cemetery floor and rake as much of it away as possible to give the cadaver dogs their best shot at finding our missing burial locations. You can see from the attached pictures, the cemetery is normally full of vinca and undergrowth. After 3+ hours of very hard work, the cemetery was transformed. We didn't quite have the time, manpower nor dump truck capacity to completely clear the cemetery floor as much as we would have liked, but we came close.
March 2nd, Wednesday, Canine Forensics (ICF) will be coming with 4 "teams" to survey the cemetery, weather permitting. I believe we will have to reschedule if there is substantial rain. They plan to be at the cemetery from around 9-9:30 until 2:30 or so. They will be using most, if not all, of the parking along the east side of the cemetery. From the ICF, ""Friends" are very welcome to observe. But please don't talk to, call, play with, or pet the dogs while they are working. Please keep your voices down and your demeanor calm. And be aware that handlers may ask you to move away. If you want to interact with any dog after they are done working, please ask the handler, first." Anyone wishing to watch is more than welcome to, as long as the instructions above are followed. If you do come, please do NOT park where we usually do next to the cemetery, but instead park along the road close to where you turn off the Bodega Highway.
The ICF will mark areas of interest identified by the dogs with flags. They will also be sending us a subsequent written report. Fingers crossed that they are able to identify some of our as yet unknown burial sites. Many thanks to Sally who has organized all of this for us.
The volunteers have temporarily cleared the cemetery floor, but we did not attempt to permanently remove the vinca and other vegetation. I expect our usual lush growth will be back as soon as the rains return. Given we have this rare situation of a more accessible cemetery floor, we are also proceeding with more detailed metal detecting. Kirston did a bit of that yesterday, as we were clearing areas, but Mike and his son Peter plan to do a more extensive search this weekend. They will be using advanced metal detectors used on archaeological sites. Exciting times!
Our next scheduled workday will be Friday, April 8th, weather permitting.
My thanks to all the very hard working volunteers who showed up yesterday for our epic clearing session.
Best Regards,
Sue
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