In the UK, there is an Association of Nature Reserve Burial Grounds that networks the 25 or so woodland burial grounds where a tree is planted instead of having a headstone. In the following American article, originally published in Catalyst, Vol VIII, No. 3 and 4, and in Green Egg, and e-mailed to the Institute, Erik van Lennep imagines how such a movement might be in the States.
Memorial Day dawns with the soft light of late May, as a gentle breeze stirs the leaves of a richly varied forest canopy. As the Sun warms the Earth, birds are busily searching out food for Spring hatchlings, bees work the blossoms on a wealth of different species, and a tardy few deer return to their deep woods shelter after a night of browsing and carousing.
Hours later, humans begin to arrive for a day of reflection, reunion, and celebration among the groves. An elderly woman comes to plant hepaticas at the base of a young white oak. Tucking the roots into the dark compost amongst the oak's roots, she lovingly waters them, all the while talking to her husband, to the tree. They have been one in her mind since she planted the tree on his grave fifteen years ago.
Further down the slope a young family sits at the base of a grand chestnut, amidst a scattering of smaller chestnut trees - all blight resistant American chestnut cultivars, of course - and tells stories about the relatives and ancestors whose bodies now feed the trees where they have spread their blankets. In a ravine, stand great white pines planted to hold the banks against erosion after the last-ever clearcut on this site. Flying squirrels peak from nest cavities in the boles of the eldest trees.
Further upslope, a stand of shagbark hickories unfurls its leaflets like a bronzy green haze amidst the stout twiggy branches. The sounds of singing and the rasp of shovels against soil can be heard from the edge of the meadow, where a family in mourning is laying to rest the eldest of their Great Aunts, soon to be memorialized by a new thicket of her favourite wild plums. As a sign at the entrance reads, "We are all but compost for future lives. The cycle alone endures".
This is a scene from the future sacred grove, created by a combination of concern for restoration of damaged lands, climate stabilisation, planning for the provision of increased old growth habitat, and creation of new recreation lands to alleviate pressure on vital wilderness. The land may have been secured through a new concept in land trusts, a trust devoted to environmental rehabilitation, and reclaimed through the hands of local citizens sick and tired of watching the world fall apart around them. A rehabilitation-as-empowerment project designed for and by youth may have played a key part. Sales of native plants, researched and cultivated by the youth eco-restoration corps not only helped to fund the cost of initial salvage operations, but continues today as a revenue source for the minimal management costs of the groves.
The community surrounding the groves also reflects the local nursery activity, in some areas having merged with the Forest of The Ancestors. Initial costs of purchasing land was through sales of cemetery plots, at well below the going rate for the burial industry, but sufficient for project needs. The first 'clients' were a combination of those whose families could not afford the high cost of plots and fees within the established system, baby boom environmentalists looking ahead as they reached middle age, and a scattering of garden clubbers and wilderness buffs.
Western industrial culture holds few things sacred. It will tolerate few mysteries within its realm. For this reason, respect is also a rarity within contemporary Western society. As a whole, we do not respect our parents, our elders, our ancestors, or our children. We do not respect our waters, the land, the air, or Earth's natural cycles. We do not respect our neighbours, and we do not respect other races or cultures. We rarely even respect ourselves.
On of the few forces allowed to retain some mystery, and therefore able to command some respect, is death. We accord some measure of respect to our own dead, and to their resting places. As callously as developers may treat the burial sites of other peoples' ancestors, our own graveyards may come as close to sacred ground as any other place identified with our culture.
In the eco-cemetery, the final resting places would be marked by trees, or thickets and groves. Discreet markers at the base of trees would help families find the burial sites, and serve to commemorate the dead, but the most visible memorial would be in the living trees. Metaphysically, metaphorically, chemically, and conceptually, the dead would live on as a tree, a grove, an entire forest dedicated in loving memory.
While the impetus for the creation of eco-cemeteries may be found in a combination of economic and environmental concerns, the benefits go far beyond. The use of 'sacred grove' as both an expression and as a concept is powerful. By connecting people with a positive image of the cycles of Life, the ensuing generations will grow to respect both forests and ancestors in a manner not seen for many western generations. The community and family ritual of tree tending, coupled with acceptance of the natural order within a forest destined to grow old, will engender different attitudes than the obsessive manipulation and manicuring of today's cemeteries. Human communities and all forests will benefit from the sacred groves, and the West just might begin to understand the ideas held sacred by other cultures.
Erik van Lennep, in 1990 PO Box 73, Strafford, VT 05072, USA (e-mail: Erik.Vanlennep@Dartmouth.EDU). The author has a second document on how to organise such a Grove project.
This webpage forms part of the Global Ideas Bank (www.globalideasbank.org).
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