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sawbeaver · 5 months

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Prayer of the Wanderers.

*This is the cover illustration of my Fanzine2

#medieval fantasy #medieval #hermes worship #hermes god #roadside shrine #shrine #pen drawing #mercury #pilgrimage #pilgrim

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sixminutestoriesblog · 6 months

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descansos

photo link

Growing up in the southern US it never occurred to me that some of the things I was used to seeing on a daily basis would be considered odd by anyone else. Yes, there were always cows in fields near the roads, Piggly Wiggly made sure you always saw large signs with a smiling pig on it as you traveled between towns, South of the Border wasn't really a theme park - but it kind of was - and you weren't going to escape its billboards until you were north of the Mason-Dixon line

and there were going to be small white crosses decorated with plastic flowers along the road as you drove.

I took those little white crosses so for granted that it wasn't until someone from another country commented on how strange they were that I even, with the front of my brain, remembered them. They certainly weren't everywhere - but they were common enough on the sides of the road that you couldn't drive too far without seeing one and they became almost ubiquitous, as much a part of the natural landscape as the cows in the fields. I don't even remember ever having to ask why they were there, though I must have. They simply were and me and all my friends knew exactly why they were there and what they meant.

The crosses, sometimes by themselves and sometimes in clusters, marked the spot where people had died in traffic accidents.

Now, humanity likes its memorials. We built a lot of them and if the people in charge won't build one, oftentimes, people will create them for themselves, showing up to specific spots to leave flowers, stuffed animals or candles. They're a way for us to mark somewhere as different from the rest of the world, a place for grief and remembrance, somewhere we can gather and acknowledge a wound left behind by a passing. These aren't graves, very often the body or bodies are laid to rest somewhere else entirely. Instead these are communal mourning places, either somewhere special to the ones lost or else where violence overtook them, usually unexpected and sharply quick. Memorials aren't often for expected deaths. Memorials are for the sudden ones, the unpredictable ones, the ones that leap out of the dark and took their prey before we knew what was happening.

'Something terrible happened here, pay attention'.

Roadside memorials aren't unique to the US either. Traffic accidents happen the world over and its human nature to want to mark the spot a loved one's last moments were, where the tragic accident came upon them unaware. There are ghost bikes left behind, a bicycle painted entirely white and chained to the spot where a cyclist was killed by a car. There are ghost shoes, nailed to poles at eye height, painted entirely white to mark where a pedestrian was hit. Some countries leave wreaths, bouquets, stone markers or signs. Some, no doubt, leave crosses. But why are small, wooden, usually white, crosses so uniform across the southern US?

Part of it is, of course, that the 'Bible Belt' stretches the same route and so markers of Southern brand Christianity are commonplace.

That's not where it started.

These small white crosses started in New Mexico and spread outward from there. New Mexico, in turn, inherited them from Mexico. In New Mexico these roadside crosses are called descansos, a 'resting place'. Long before cars, when a body needed to be carried to its final resting place, the funeral procession would either carry the coffin on their shoulders, or in cases where the graveyard was further away, in a animal drawn cart. Each place the coffin was set down so that its bearers could rest, or stop for the night, was marked with a white wooden cross, hammered into the ground where the dead, and their escort, had rested before moving onward. These white crosses marked the road from where the person had died to the graveyard where they were settled into their final resting place. In fact, over time, the white crosses came to represent the path from town to the graveyard, serving as a kind of sign post to anyone that needed them. Sometimes, on trails far from home, the white cross next to the roadside would actually serve to make the grave of someone that had died so far from anywhere that there was no where to bury them but for the most part, descansos were resting places on the way to the final resting spot.

With the arrival of cars and faster transportation, the stark little descansos weren't needed to serve as markers of sorrow that had traveled, and found rest, along the way toward its final destination anymore. Instead, they began to serve another purpose. The little white crosses stayed a place for grief to rest from its burden for a while but now it was in the form of leaving offerings or memories, a place where the people left behind, mourning their loved ones, could remind anyone traveling that route that someone precious had died and was still mourned. Descantos always faced the road, not away from it. The whole point of a descantos is to be seen by strangers.

In the 1940s through the 1950s the Arizona Highway Patrol began marking places along the highway where automobile fatalities had occurred with small white crosses. Even after they stopped, the families of the dead picked up the habit and carried it forward. While the laws regulating roadside memorials vary from state to state in the US, in New Mexico, descansos are still considered sacred and on the rare occasions road workers are forced to move them when repairing or expanding the roads, they are careful to restore them to as close to the spot they were taken from as possible. These days the forms the memorials take vary widely, but whether they stay a humble cross or not, they still serve to both let mourners mark the spot where they lost their loved one -

and to also serve as a warning and a reminder to all passing motorists.

'Traveling the highways of America is dangerous. Keep alert. Be aware. Don't become the next white cross sprouting along the side of this long, deadly stretch of American highway."

#descansos #roadside memorial #roadside cross #travel #new mexico #mexico #american highway #ngl I feel weird posting pictures #white crosses #shrine #roadside shrine

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ross-hori · 4 months

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Random from the archive

#photography #japan #street photography #kobe #original photographers #roadside shrine

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emmaklee · 1 year

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shrine of rocks, India

ph nevil zaveri

#roadside shrine #india

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stjohncapistrano67 · 11 months

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A photograph of a pre Vatican II council child at a roadside shrine.

#traditional catholicism #traditional catholic images #pre vatican ii council catholic images #pre vatican ii council catholism #roadside shrine

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maria-aegyptiaca · 7 months

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Source

#roadside #shrines #flickr

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infantjesusofprague · 5 months

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Interstate 40 West

35°23'07.2"N 96°27'59.4"W

“The more you honor me the more I will bless you”

I’m not sure what this sign means to me. It’s familiar. I passed it frequently for the past two years of my life, but I won’t really anymore. It’s funny to me. I’ve been tempted to go see the shrine, but I haven’t. It’s just in some regular church, I think. Maybe I’ll find out later.

#jesus christ #Jesus #Prague #infant Jesus of prague #iconoclasts #false idols #roadside #signage #billboard #evangelism #national #the national shrine of the infant jesus of prague #Oklahoma #interstate #I-40

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morgenlich · 7 months

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so a fun fact about germany is that there are Autobahnkirchen, churches you can visit just off the autobahn

#according to wiki not the only country that has them but fascinating nonetheless #the natural successor to roadside shrines

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collectibles-menu · 10 months

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If something goes wrong, you can take cover behind me. I think Statalus likes me because I built a shrine to him.

- @roadside-shrines

Mhm, gotcha. The Shrine was meant to protect us from Gnomes, but if it can protect us from the wrath of a God, that isn't too bad either.

...

Wait, you're a Shrine Maiden, you work with Gods. Do you know anything powerful enough to poison a God? Stalatus bandaged his wound, but if we can tear off the bandages or get something through them, surely we could inflict a debuff on him

#asks #colli communicates #collecting friends #roadside-shrines #a god amongst exclams [arc]

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opia-jpg · 1 year

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i was looking through an album with photos of oil paintings done by a local artist and ough. it's been a while since i felt such a strong connection to an other human being. like.... i look at those artworks and think. do you admire how magical this specific narrow street looks in the evenings as i do? have you glanced at the old chapel surrounded in fresh leaves and felt the same tug in your heart as i have? have you seen how the silhouette of basilica looks from the riverside and needed to immortalise it so badly? we walked the same streets and we both found them profoundly beautiful, maybe in spite of the mundanity of seeing them every day. i don't know

#it's funny because i actually met this man in person! and i didn't really like his speech during the little demonstration he made #but at the same time he gets it! he understands how it feels!#he made me want to go outside and make that painting of alittle roadside shrine ive been dreaming of for years like. right now #juno's silly little thoughts #im so tired im not sure im making sense but i hope you get the vision

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life-of-architecture · 2 years

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Złockie foto z 26 lipca 2017

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Złockie, Poland taken on 26 July 2017

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johnschneiderblog · 1 year

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All in on Valentine’s Day

As I’ve noted here before, we’re prone to straying from the freeways on our road trips, eager to see more of the places we drive through than we can see from four lanes.

Not that we’d want to drive surface road the whole 900 miles to Hilton Head ... but on Tuesday, as we made our way through West Virginia, we took a little detour and found ourselves on Coal Mountain River Road, a twisty little stretch of asphalt that, true to its name, parallels the river.

There, on the edge of nowhere, we came upon this shrine to Valentine’s Day, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.

We spent the night in Statesville, North Carrolina. Today we’ll complete the final leg of the trip and expect to be walking “our” beach before nightfall.

No sunshine yet, but the temperature hit 56 Tuesday.

#John Schneider #road trip #straying from the freeways #roadside attractions #Valentine's Day shrine

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deputystakes-a2 · 2 years

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not only does ashley read the bibles kept in motel room drawers, he also has the holy bible app on his phone.

#whenever you enter the app. it asks how you're feeling.#and ashley always picks either angry or faithful. but mostly angry.#he is perfect to me <3 #HC.#he also stops at roadside shrines. doesn't matter if christian's in the car or not.

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shootwithheart · 6 months

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Small pieces of my heart cut up and on display for your aesthetic mood boards.

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I want that more than I can say

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willtheweaver · 2 months

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Some locations and structures to include in your forest

Abandoned shrine

Alchemist’s lab

Ancient ruins

Army encampment

Battlefield memorial

Boathouse

Bridge, log

Bridge, stone arch

Bridge, suspension

Bridge, wooden beam

Causeway

Cablin

Cable car station

Cairns- grave markers

Cairns- trail marker

Cave system

Caved-in tunnel

Cemetery

Clearing

Campsite

Castle (robber baron or otherwise)

Collapsed building

Dam

Dirt track

Ditch, defensive

Ditch, henge monument

Dock

Dragon’s lair

Elven settlement

Fairy ring

Farm

Ferry landing

Ford

Fort, earthen

Fort, stone

Fort, wooden

Game trail

Ghost town

Guardhouse

Haunted ruins

Hermit’s hut

Hollow hill

Hunting lodge

Hunter’s hide

Inn

Logging camp

Manor house

Mine

Monastery

Outlaw’s hideout

Overgrown ruins

Potholes

Paved road

Portal

Quarry

Railroad

Rail station

Raised platform

Roadside grave

Sacred grove

Sawmill

Sky burial platform

Signpost

Stone circle

Summoning ring

Switchback

Temple

Tollbooth

Treehouse

Troll cave

Tunnel entrance

Turnpike

Village

Waterwheel

Watchtower, stone

Watchtower, wooden

Witches’ cottage

Wizard’s tower

Zip line

#writing #creative writing #writing inspiration #writing ideas #writing prompts #worldbuilding #writer #writers #writing community #writer on tumblr #writeblr

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maria-aegyptiaca · 11 months

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#couldnt find a source for this but i think it is a roadside shrine in greece #my uploads

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