Among Boston's many fine contributions to American culture, garden cemeteries stand out as my personal favorites. In 1831, some wealthy Bostonians decided they wanted to spend eternity someplace nice, gosh darn it, so they acquired a plot of land up the road from Harvard, with a great view, and put a cemetery there. But this was a cemetery very unlike previous ones; it was big and sprawling, with a botanical garden's worth of exotic trees and flowers, ponds, elegant landscaping, and twisty country roads and paths. In short, it was a cemetery for the living as much as for the dead.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and its slightly less elegant cousin across the Charles, Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain (founded in 1848), are beautiful spots for being gloomy all year 'round, but never more so than in the fall. There are precious few times when I feel like I truly belong in this world, but a dismal, drizzly September afternoon at Forest Hills, not a living soul around, with Dead Can Dance on the Discman...I fit in just fine then.