Plant conservationists have a thing for old cemeteries.
As it turns out, grave sites are often some of the only lands passed over by development and agriculture. As a result, many of the native species remain there. Some of the endangered species manage to keep going because of these undisturbed graveyards.
Why does this matter? As we look around at what’s happening in our culture, it seems all we can find are differences. Some differences are obvious and deplorable, like income disparity. Some have always been there, like religious differences. Unless you’re living under a rock, you know that we are living in extreme times. Challenges to long-held civil rights, the dismantling of public lands for fossil fuel extraction and logging, the unchecked threat of climate-driven natural disasters, and neglect of public programs in favor of global terror and genocide. All of these things culminate in the question of who gets remembered in the first place. This land was filled with sacred burial sites of Native Americans before settlers ever came. Yet, it’s the settler’s graves that have largely been preserved while the relatives of N.A.’s get buildings, roads, and pipe lines built on top of them.
No matter what side you’re on, though, and no matter how much power anyone has - the things we still have in common are food and death.
While I won’t speak on specific traditions of different cultures when it comes to death (though I’d love to hear in the comments if anyone wants to share theirs!), it’s safe to say that the modern conventional funeral industry is …weird. It seems we are doing the most to prevent the molecules of tissue, water, and bone from re-entering the web of life. We embalm with hazardous chemicals. We exert a huge amount of energy to incinerate people in cremation, producing inert ash to be held in a container until all the people who knew and cared for that person are gone, or spread into a natural area that has no need for it. Have you seen the viral videos of people finding urns donated to thrift stores? Yikes.
It’s almost as if we want to ignore the fact that the raw materials of the body have all undoubtedly been a part of other living beings before becoming part of our bodies. The ~70% of water that we are composed of may have passed through dinosaurs for all we know. And yet, we insist on being the last stop?
Before we had public parks, graveyards were the common space for outdoor activities. We’d have picnics, play sports, and go for a stroll among the headstones. The dead were in good company, and the trees grew tall. Now, graveyards sit empty aside from lawn mowers and bereaved visitors.
As we watch the federal funding for public natural areas like parks getting cut, the majority of Americans struggling to make ends meet, and gofundme’s sit unfulfilled to cover the exorbitant costs of a conventional burial, maybe it’s time to re-think our relationship with death. Perhaps it’s the friend we didn’t know we were missing, rather than a creepy stranger to be locked out until it inevitably beats the door down anyway. It’s the difference between waste in a landfill vs compost. It’s an example of death as a new beginning, as a nutritive substance, as the fertility for all to come after.
The agroforestry movement is getting stronger, with lots of research and trials being conducted on farming with trees each year. However, in order to successfully roll out such practices, we need long-term land access and protections. A handful of lucky land-owning farmers such as ourselves may be able to deploy a few hundred trees. We may be able to spend the rest of our lives tending those trees. But what happens after that? How do we keep intergenerational projects like agroforestry alive and well after those of us who started them are gone?
Perhaps, in order to make death fertile again, a marriage is in order. A marriage of agroforestry with the funeral industry. Maybe we can make natural, or “green” burial accessible by cutting out a lot of labor and cost of embalming or cremation. I’ve met some folks working at this specific intersection, who weave beautiful caskets from willows. Perhaps, instead of visiting a lonely row of gravestones while remembering our loved ones, we could visit them while harvesting elderberries, tapping maple trees, harvesting heart nuts. A natural graveyard could be as beautiful as any rural wedding venue. It could protect land in a way that private or even public ownership of land has failed in the long-run.
I hope this gives someone who has land looking for a good project something to chew on. I hope that those of us who are willing to think about death and make peace with it will advocate for access to green burial in their communities. Ritual around death has been with us for longer than we’ve been Homo sapiens. That means there must be some evolutionary importance to it. Let’s honor that in a way that celebrates and continues the cycle of life, while protecting as much land as we possibly can for future generations.
With love, future dead farmer Rox<3
Resources:
Scientific American : Graveyards are surprising hotspots for biodiversity
Pacific Northwest Trail : Who Will Keep Our Trails Open
Green Burial Council : Database of green cemeteries
Forest Home Cemetery & Arboretum : green burial in the Milwaukee area
The intersection of land stewardship and green burial is a lovely idea. Make death fertile again. 🖤🌱
You're opening minds, Rox. Especially mine!