Forest of Memories

By Jonathan, Move Blog

On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. Instead of the friendly union, of life and death so apparent in Nature, we are taught that death is an accident, a deplorable punishment for the oldest sin, the archenemy of life.

But let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony.

-John Muir from A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

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By Nancy Jacques, Good Dirt Radio

When it comes to resource efficiency, even in death, we have choices that can affect a sustainable future. Consider the conventional burial, American style, which annually requires some 828,000 gallons of toxic embalming fluid, over a hundred thousand tons of steel and 30 million board feet of lumber.

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By Diane M. Cooper, Spirit of Ma’at

Green Burial is a less expensive and more meaningful burial option that provides loved ones with a peaceful resting place in a manner friendly towards nature, wildlife, and the environment. Burial sites are in woodlands and meadowlands, preserving natural habitat for insects, birds, and other wildlife. The use of natural-fiber shrouds, cardboard, or chipboard coffins reduces pollution and needless destruction of forests. ‘’Nature reserve burial grounds'’ and ‘’woodland burial grounds'’ are other terms commonly used.

Memorial Ecosystems, formed in 1996, provides Green Burial at its Ramsey Creek nature preserve — the only site of its kind in the United States. It also funds nonprofit organizations, education, the arts, and scientific research. The following is an interview with its founder, Billy Campbell, M.D.

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By Rebecca James, Syracuse Post-Standard

Susan Thomas’ dog bounds across the field, leaping out of the underbrush that covers the southern Tompkins County hilltop, intent on the scent of some small creature. Meanwhile, Thomas and Ed Oyer talk about death. The artist and the retired professor both like the idea of finding stone benches for this land where the names of the dead can be inscribed.

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By Bruce Geiselman, Waste News.com

Billy Campbell is a rural doctor, an environmentalist and something of a pioneer — opening the nation´s first “green cemetery.” Dr. Campbell also jokes that he operates the nation´s only combination doctor´s office and cemetery office. “I´m pretty sure we´re the only one,” he said, laughing.

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The latest trend in undertaking gives new meaning to the term ‘dust to dust’

By Patricia Leigh Brown, The Sydney Morning Herald

TOMMY Odom’s remains lie on a steep, windswept hill at Fernwood Cemetery, New Jersey, beneath an oak sapling, a piece of petrified wood and a bundle of dried sage tied with a lavender ribbon. When he died in a traffic accident last year, Odom, 41, became the first of 40 people at Fernwood to move on to greener pastures - literally.

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Fernwood Cemetery in Marin County now offers green burials.

By - 30 Minutes Bay Area, CBS-5 (San Francisco)

The green burial movement started in the United Kingdom where there are now about 150 sites. Dr. Billy Campbell founded the US’s first green burial cemetery in Westminster, SC. Opened in 1998, the Ramsey Creek Preserve now has had about 100 burials and sold an additional 50-100 plots. Campbell says that there are about 20 green burial cemeteries in development across the country but only four open for business including his and Fernwood in Marin.

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Lori Valigra, National Geographic News

A burial in outer space seems a fitting farewell for James Doohan, the actor who played the beloved engineer “Scotty” on Star Trek. To honor his final wishes, some of Doohan’s ashes will be shot into space this fall, along with a CD of tributes from fans and loved ones.

Celebrities aren’t the only ones considering alternatives to a conventional funeral. More people in the U.S. are rejecting traditional burials as too costly and ecologically unsound. Instead they are chosing environmentally friendly, and often highly personalized, goodbyes.

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By Tad Friend, The New YorkerHow much rest do the dead require? Late this spring, two experts were discussing burial theory over lunch at a Japanese restaurant in Mill Valley, California. The elder man, Ron Hast, had just visited Fernwood, a new “green” cemetery on the edge of town owned by the younger man, his friend and protege Tyler Cassity. Hast is an avuncular fixture in the funeral industry. In his earlier days in Los Angeles, in the sixties and seventies, he invented the Casket Airtray, which enables corpses to fly home in style, and he ran a service that provided mortuaries with embalmers and pallbearers, men known for their navy-blue suits and perfect manners and prepossessing youth. When Marilyn Monroe and Gary Cooper and Clark Gable died, Hast’s men helped compose them for their final closeups. Now in semiretirement, at sixty-six, Hast edits and publishes the magazines Mortuary Management and Funeral Monitor.

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By Amy Davidson, The New Yorker Magazine

This week in the magazine, Tad Friend writes about the California cemeterian who is trying to redefine the idea of last rites. Here, with Amy Davidson, he talks about green burials, graveyard tourism, and the future of funerals.

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