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January/February 2010: Roadside Remembrances |
Roadside Remembrances
A closer look at handmade shrines
by Annie Stoltie
 Four years ago Tara LaDuke lost her life when she flipped her car along a shoulder of Haselton Road, a snaking two-lane stretch that parallels the Ausable River from Wilmington to Black Brook. As dawn broke, the 24-year-old, already showered and ready for her job at the Plattsburgh Price Chopper bakery, had been driving from a friend’s in Saranac Lake to her home in Peasleeville. State troopers say the pavement was dry that autumn morning and speed was likely a factor in the accident. But that doesn’t matter. When LaDuke’s loved ones memorialized her along Haselton with a wooden cross, 13 angel statuettes—some playing violin or lute, others with hands clasped in prayer—a New York Yankees flag and a plaque that reads, “Dear Tara If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane I’d walk right up to heaven and bring you home again,” they were simply grieving the loss of a daughter, sister, lover and friend.
They were also erecting a shrine in the tradition of 17th-century Spanish priests and settlers who brought the practice of marking descanos, or resting places, to the Southwest. In her Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture, folklorist Holly Everett cites this ritual as representing “a very real, as well as metaphorical, interruption of life’s journey.”
You’ve probably seen a handful of these memorials in the Adirondack Park—cairns or white crosses or, in the case of a man killed in a drunk-driving crash in Hawkeye, a nature scene painted on a boulder. Though not as ubiquitous as along highways in New Mexico, around here they jump out, a flash of man-made shape and color in forested funnels of earth tones (though in winter most are buried beneath snowbanks). That’s when they serve another role—to remind motorists to slow down, pay attention, contemplate the fragility of life. In this capacity, according to State University of New York at Potsdam anthropology professor John Omohundro, “The dead teach the living.”
A spokesman for the New York State Police says the agency doesn’t have an official position on roadside shrines, but “if we’ve seen a memorial that was extensive or disruptive to the flow of traffic, we have asked the grieving parties to make proper adjustments.” Likewise, “We realize there’s sentimentality, and permit them as long as they’re not hazards,” explains a representative for the state’s department of transportation. He adds that it’s also a danger “any time a motorist steps on a shoulder” to maintain these shrines.
The possibility of putting another person at peril is one of the reasons my big sister, whose husband died in 2006 when his car was broadsided at a seemingly sleepy rural Michigan intersection, says she’d never erect a marker at an accident site. Plus, recognizing the spot of someone’s demise “isn’t important to me,” she explains. “How can you find closure and move forward if you have to pass something that would make you sad every time you saw it? Why not plant a tree in a place where you have positive memories?”
My sister emphasizes she is, in no way, opposed to makeshift memorials. But you don’t have to click much on the Internet to find varying takes on them, usually debates that, in addition to safety concerns, hang on the sacred versus the secular. Some people argue that Christian crosses and other religious symbols placed in public spaces violate the separation of church and state. Others view these displays as an exercise in freedom of speech as protected under the First Amendment. There’s even a worldwide database, the National Memorial Registry (www.nationalmemorialregistry.com), where you can enter the name of the deceased and coordinates of the tribute to be logged and mapped. The Texas-based company claims it’s a clearinghouse “for future generations to access and gain valuable information about their ancestors’ past.”
It’s possible the North Country makes an appearance on the registry. Up here, hamlets are connected by a spare web of roads, and public transportation is rare. So just about everyone drives. They drive into valleys, beside lakes, over passes and through woods in all weather, often dodging wildlife.
In 2007, the most recent year the New York Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee offers statistics on state vehicular accidents, 16,533 were reported—83 of which involved a fatality—in the counties that make up the Adirondack Park (that includes those portions of counties that hang outside the Blue Line). The majority of these wrecks occurred between noon and six p.m., perhaps when motorists steered home from work, minds occupied by something that happened by the water cooler, or what to prepare for the evening meal. Maybe cell phones or iPods caused distractions.
As Adirondackers, it’s easy to glaze over the terrain we navigate each day—river, field, forest, lake, mountain. But sights like a garnet sunset or Tara LaDuke’s Haselton shrine jar us into reality. We remember that our surroundings are magnificent, that life is precious.
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