Sanctified by Silence
Indianola Pioneer Cemetery lies beneath a canopy of tangled vines and whispering leaves, where time has softened the edges of stone and memory. Established in 1898 by Thomas H. Sanders and his wife Mary, this 4.36-acre resting ground holds the bones of Merritt Island’s earliest white settlers—soldiers of the Civil War, veterans of the Spanish-American War, and those who served through Vietnam. The forest presses inward, as if trying to reclaim what history once marked as sacred.
Here, the air is heavy with silence—not peace, but presence. The gravestones lean like weary sentinels, their inscriptions fading into moss and shadow. Once part of Evergreen Cemetery, now it stands alone, a monument to lives that shaped the land and then surrendered to it. The ground feels watchful. The trees seem older than they should. And the wind carries stories that no longer have names.
This is not a place of mourning—it is a place of memory, wrapped in decay and reverence. A place where the past is not buried, but waiting.
My latest photography is now available for purchase at crsimages.pixels.com/, featuring prints, framed art, and more from my curated collections.
Sanctified by Silence
Indianola Pioneer Cemetery lies beneath a canopy of tangled vines and whispering leaves, where time has softened the edges of stone and memory. Established in 1898 by Thomas H. Sanders and his wife Mary, this 4.36-acre resting ground holds the bones of Merritt Island’s earliest white settlers—soldiers of the Civil War, veterans of the Spanish-American War, and those who served through Vietnam. The forest presses inward, as if trying to reclaim what history once marked as sacred.
Here, the air is heavy with silence—not peace, but presence. The gravestones lean like weary sentinels, their inscriptions fading into moss and shadow. Once part of Evergreen Cemetery, now it stands alone, a monument to lives that shaped the land and then surrendered to it. The ground feels watchful. The trees seem older than they should. And the wind carries stories that no longer have names.
This is not a place of mourning—it is a place of memory, wrapped in decay and reverence. A place where the past is not buried, but waiting.
My latest photography is now available for purchase at crsimages.pixels.com/, featuring prints, framed art, and more from my curated collections.