This article was planned before recent developments and is not meant to be a trigger. Please be advised.
As the old saying goes, the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Although there are many options advertised for the latter, options for the former have, shall we say, been buried.
One grass roots group is working to change that.
Cascades Natural Burial (CNB), a local group in the Methow Valley, is working on a greener local burial option. It seems ironic that people who consciously try to live in harmony with nature poison it with their remains, but without another option, that is what people are faced with in the valley.
Everything from highly toxic embalming fluid to nonbiodegradable caskets and underground concrete or plastic vaults is “far from a natural process,” according to CNB.
Each year, cemeteries in the US bury 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid, 20 million board feet of tropical hardwood, 64,500 tons of steel, 17,000 tons of copper and bronze, and 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete, according to the organization.
If you’re thinking about cremation, that uses 28 gallons of fuel for a single body and releases mercury and other heavy metals into the atmosphere.
It hasn’t always been this way.
A Return to the Past
“Natural burial is traditional burial. It’s the kind done by our ancestors since our earliest times,” CNB’s treasurer Betsy Cushman said during a first Tuesday presentation in January hosted by Methow Conservancy.
Efforts to designate a natural burial site in or near the valley have been underway since 2007, when Susie Kowalczyk was elected to the county cemetery board. Kowalczyk worked for seven years to establish natural burial grounds in the valley’s two cemeteries but it wasn’t feasible and ultimately rejected.
Beaver Creek and Sullivan Cemeteries have since adopted policies prohibiting natural burial.
CNB is looking for land near the Methow Valley that could serve as a natural burial site. Ideally, the site would be about 20 acres, not on a floodplain, not on solid rock, have road access and be welcomed by neighbors, said Cushman.
“It would be a place that not only welcomes the burial of our dead, but also becomes integrated into our lives as a place to visit, have memorials, and maybe even a picnic or a walk,” said Cushman.
Cushman said CNB needs three things: a place, a partner and a stewardship plan to take care of the place.
Glenn Graves, co-director of River Valley Funeral & Cremation in Okanogan, is on board.
“We love everything about this,” he said during the presentation. “It’s really exciting to talk about this because I think if we put our heads together, we can get this done.”
A Greener Alternative
Natural cemeteries run counter to the iconic burial images in our culture. There are no heavy tombstones, no steel caskets, no embalming fluid and in its purest form, no vaults. They don’t use toxic chemicals for landscaping. Containers, caskets and shrouds are biodegradable and people are allowed to participate in burial rites such as lowering the body and closing the grave.
Without underground vaults to keep the soil level, natural cemeteries have undulating grounds instead of flat lawns.
Bodies do not have to be tested for chemicals prior to burial. People receiving chemotherapy or other radiation can have a natural burial.
“Soil is an excellent remediator,” said Jodie Buller, Cemetery Director at White Eagle Memorial Preserve near Goldendale, a natural burial site.
Anything that contains a battery, like a pacemaker, has to be removed before burial, but artificial joints and incidental metals, such as Harley Davidson keys or other mementos, will not harm the earth, said Buller.
“They are not going to have any kind of impact on the land but they make a huge impact in the grief process,” she said.
Graves said the participatory element of the funeral is important for the healing process. He had to face the lack of local natural burial options when his own father passed away. Graves said his father was cremated so that he could be buried on his ranch, as his father wanted.
Washington state law prohibit burials of corpses on private property. Bills allowing such a measure, including one proposed this legislative session, have not passed. The practice is legal in Oregon if the property meets the requirements of the local planning department, has their written approval and is disclosed in the sale of the property.
CNB hopes to establish a natural burial site through education and promotion. They have had booths at the farmers market, Earth Day events, and at private organizations. Cushman said the group is open to sharing with the community what they have learned about natural burial and answer questions.
“We believe that many in our community of the Methow will identify with natural burial as being consistent with their values around being one with nature and their love of this place,” said Cushman.
Methow Conservancy Education Programs Coordinator Bridger Layton,who moderated the discussion, said the conservancy is also learning about natural burial, along with the community, but has no plans for a natural burial site. Methow Conservancy Executive Director Sarah Brooks told MVE this was only an educational presentation for the community as part of their first Tuesdays series.
White Eagle Memorial Preserve
White Eagle Memorial Preserve is a 20 acre conservation burial ground and one of only 10 such sites in the country. A conservation burial ground has minimal burial density, meaning the graves are farther apart.
At White Eagle, each cemetery plot is 20 by 20 feet. Conservation burial grounds emphasize conservation and balancing the ecosystem. They typically operate in partnership with a land trust and a conservation easement that is often held by a land trust.
The deceased’s friends and family are invited to participate directly before and after the funeral, including shoveling the plot, acting as pallbearers and laying the deceased into the ground. Decedents can arrive by hearse or by horse.
Buller, who has worked at White Eagle for 11 years and is a founding member of the Conservation Burial Alliance, showed pictures of a decedent who loved horses who was brought to the burial ground in a decorated horse trailer.
Decedents are transferred onto a wheeled cart and taken to their grave site. The family is invited to participate.
A seasonal garden nearby is used to decorate burial sites before and after burial. Graves are dug by hand except occasionally, in winter months, when they might use a small excavator.
Graves are three and a half to four feet deep in the cemetery’s rocky soil. People are buried closer to the surface than in conventional cemeteries because that is where there is the most microbial activity. Digging a grave deeper than 4 feet negates the purpose of a natural burial, said Buller.
Grave mounds subside as the body decomposes. Buller says it does not attract animals except for squirrels who bury acorns near the surface of the loose earth.
“What we’re really trying to do is not impact this intact ecosystem. We’re trying not to cut roots of these hundreds of years old trees, but we’re also trying to be a functioning business that knows where people are, where we’ve buried people and are able to track those things,” she said.
For the living, people can walk and ride horses on trails in the conservation area.
“As you walk through White Eagle, it doesn’t feel like you’re walking through a cemetery. The burial mounds are often integrated into the landscape in such a way that you don’t notice them if you aren’t looking,” Buller says in a video on the cemetery’s website.
Buller said the conservation cemetery was initiated when the founder of Sacred Earth Foundation, a 501c3 land trust organization that ran summer camps for kids for 20 years, died suddenly in 2007.
“The community knew that they needed to bury him on this land that he had spent his life working to steward and preserve,” she said.
Because they were a land trust and a nonprofit, they were able to fundraise and designate 20 of the 1260 acres in stewardship for a cemetery. The conservation burial ground was established in 2008 and the founder was buried there. Sacred Earth Foundation still uses another portion of the land to run summer camps for kids.
Buller said conservation burial grounds can become a revenue source for cemeteries and land trusts.
The cost for a natural burial at White Eagle is $4,000, which includes $3,000 for internment rights, $300 for an endowment fund to maintain the cemetery, and $700 to open and close the burial site. Payment options are available before and after someone has passed away.
Other Options for Natural Burial
Some cemeteries allow both traditional and natural burials, although they may require a vault, which not only keeps lawns flat but also prevents adjacent graves from collapsing on one another. By keeping the lawns flat, they are easier to mow. Vaults also allow graves to be more closely spaced.
Currently, there are 478 hybrid, natural and conservation cemeteries in Canada and US.
Other natural options include aquamation, in which the body dissolves in water, and terramation, in which the body is composted. Terramation was pioneered in Washington, which became the first state in the country to legalize it.
Funeral homes can facilitate the option a person or family chooses. Graves and Buller said people don’t need to rush the process.
“A lot of times people think they have to get somebody buried right away because funeral homes didn’t use to have refrigeration… but now we have refrigeration… that gives you time,” said Graves. “You can get family to fly in from out of town and you can wait a couple weeks. A couple weeks is really the sweet spot.”
“We’ll help you do whatever you want to do,” he said. “We’ll make recommendations.”
Buller says a week to two weeks is generally a good time frame between death and burial, but she has seen burials as quickly as 24 hours after death to several months later. One woman wanted to be buried when the wildflowers were in bloom, but she died at the end of February. A funeral home made that happen for her.
Buller said many people don’t realize that a funeral service can be performed at home. With a home funeral, death and transport to a cemetery can take 3 days.
“That seems to be also in conjunction with when somebody’s life force has left its vessel and gives people some time to come and visit,” said Buller.
She agreed with Graves that the sweet spot between death and burial is between one and two weeks. It gives people enough time to get a death certificate, notify people, make travel plans and let the death sink in.
Buller understands the hesitancy of adopting natural burial practices by both the public and conventional cemeteries.
“There can be death phobia in general in our culture and there can be resistance to change,” she said. “Often, existing cemeteries that have been practicing conventional burial only may be working with landscaping machinery that maybe, they would be concerned they couldn’t continue to do their business as usual. Often that’s a thing with burial mounds. They’re not going to mow that lawn. It might be more complicated. I think there are traditionally some long standing partnerships with vault companies also. It’s kind of a scratch on a record to try to ask folks that have been doing something conventionally in this one way for some time to look at it from a different angle.”
Additional information can be found at
Washington Funeral Resources & Education
