Imagine your favorite walking path through a quiet forest or a scenic meadow, the songbirds flitting among tall grasses, at rest in the morning dew. Your natural pathway winds past native wildflowers buzzing with pollinators, and rocky ridges reminding you of the passage of geologic time. This landscape is familiar to you because you visit this site to honor someone who has died and is buried on this land. This land is conserved by a local land trust and it is also a cemetery — a simple burial ground for bodies and cremated remains memorialized in nature and protected in perpetuity. In this cemetery, there are no upright granite headstones, no chain link or iron fences and no manicured lawns. There are no concrete grave liners or metal burial vaults below ground. Conservation cemeteries are sacred places that offer friends, family and the wider community a restorative place for experiencing loss, grief and the healing properties of nature. Those who live by environmental principles their whole life may prefer a green burial in a conservation cemetery, in which everything going into the ground is biodegradable. The body is not embalmed. It may be wrapped in a shroud or placed in a simple pine box and lowered into the grave by family and friends. Read more
A natural headstone in Cedar Brook Burial Ground in Limington, Maine, a conservation cemetery that provides a sustainable alternative to conventional burial. JEFF MASTEN/LANDMATTERS