Within the last several years, I’ve become interested in photographing empty seating (like chairs and benches) because there’s something about an empty seat that looks “off” to me. I know it’s not the seat being empty, per se, because a photo of a stadium with all, or even just a few seats empty doesn’t trigger anything special in me when I see it. Put an empty chair on the side of a hill, though, and that would do it. Somehow, chairs and benches seem more empty when there is only one of them surrounded by vast, or even somewhat vast, openness. Think of a bench in a farm field or a couch in a vast desert area.

So last year, I started taking photos of memorial benches in Bernheim Forest because most of them are usually not being used and they are surrounded (mostly) by beautiful scenery. Almost every bench at Bernheim has some sort of dedication plaque affixed to it describing a person or organization to whom the bench was dedicated. If I took a photo of a bench, I made it a habit to also read the dedication plaque. Near the end of Fall last year, I didn’t take a photo, but I sat in a bench to get a stone out of my hiking boot. I read the plaque when I got back up, and it was dedicated to a Steven W. Faulkenburg. I could put two and two together to realize he had been a soldier who died in battle about 1 month from his 46th birthday.

So I get up to leave, and there is another bench very close by, which is unusual because they are usually spaced far apart. Because of the close proximity, I read the dedication on that bench too. I immediately noticed that the last name, Faulkenburg, was a match with the first bench. This plaque, however, is in rough shape, so it’s more difficult to read. I can eventually make out that her name was April Dawn Faulkenburg (awesome first & middle name combination), and she had died just 3 years after her father at the age of 24.

When I got home, I did a little research to find out that Command Sergeant Major Faulkenburg was quite an individual, and there are many records of his service online. On the other hand, I could not find a single thing about his daughter, so I don’t know what could have led to such a short life. The only time I ever spotted her name was on a thank-you notice, posted among the sympathy notes under her dad’s obituary.

Now, whenever I return to Bernheim, I always look at those two benches a bit differently. Sitting beneath several Ginkgo trees that are unmatched for beauty for about 2 weeks during the Fall, they sit alone, facing each other. The symbolism is not lost on me.

I was too late last year to get the kind of photo I wanted to get of these benches, but I was monitoring the season this year in order to make a visit when the time was right. At first, I thought I might have been a few days too early, because there is still some green in the trees and they had not hit “peak gold” just yet, but the leaves don’t last long once they hit their maximum gold color, so there’s a risk of coming back on another day to a naked tree. After I looked at my photos, I think I like the touch of green in there even better because the mixture of color seems right. If I could paint (hint: I can’t even color between the lines), this would be a scene worth painting, which is why I attempted to give it a sort of painterly look.

The Ginkgo tree is thought to be the oldest, still living, species of tree on the planet at over 200 million years of age. Timeless age, meets timeless beauty and, for the Faulkenburg family & friends, timeless memories...