Winter Imbolc Moon
Instead of watching the state of the union Kate and I participated in a presentation on green burial and the possibility of creating a green cemetery. Beth Evergreen has been moving, slowly, toward a Jewish cemetery over the last six years, but Bonnie Houghton, a rabbi in training and former long time Forest Service employee has accelerated the process through her own efforts. In her current work with the Mountain Land Trust she sees properties presented for conservation easements. Some don’t qualify for that purpose, but would work well for green cemeteries, where burials eschew vaults, fancy caskets and backhoes for hand-dug graves, wicker/pine/cardboard/shroud coverings for the corpse, and small, usually flush with the ground grave markers.
Bonnie’s smart and skilled, also dogged. My sense is that her recent work might push this project over the threshold from possibility to actuality. What’s needed is some money, in the range of $250,000 to $350,000, a corporation of some sort, I suggested a co-op, and a plot of land. Bonnie and Rebecca, a CBE member and realtor, showed pictures of three properties ranging in size from 15 acres to 40+ acres.
I found this conversation oddly energizing. Something about the cliched final resting place has more resonance as I move toward my 71st birthday. Having a cemetery which celebrates the natural order of life and death with decay rather than chemicals, concrete, and metal makes so much sense to me. Having a tree planted over my cremains, or in them, feels right. Too, we could bury the remains of our many dogs with us. That would make for a unique family plot.
Now, we could have spent yesterday evening listening to the Donald try to make up for a year of unending bullshit, but we chose something productive, something focused on life and death rather than forehead slapping, groans and despair. Odd, isn’t it, that a discussion of burials and cemeteries would have more life in it than a used-to-be important political moment? The times in which we live now. I wish they’d start to decay. Soonest.
