Burial in a green or natural cemetery, on the other hand, can cost half as much, and embalming, metal caskets and concrete burial vaults are prohibited. Instead, biodegradable caskets, usually made of wood or cardboard, or burial shrouds of natural fibers are used. Green cemetery graves are placed randomly throughout a woodland or meadow, and marked only in natural ways, with the planting of a tree or shrub, or the placement of a flat indigenous stone, which may or may not be engraved. Burial locations are mapped with a GIS (geographic information system), so future generations can locate an ancestor's final resting place.

There are more than 200 green cemeteries in Great Britain, and the idea is beginning to catch on here in North America. Lisa Carlson is executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance in South Burlington, Vermont, and author of Caring for the Dead, which tackles the topic of funeral law, state by state. She reports embalming, expensive caskets and concrete vaults are not required by law in any state. Bodies can be kept cool until burial rather than being embalmed, and cemeteries require vaults only to prevent soil settling and facilitate grass mowing.

The leaders in the emerging green-cemetery business in this country, Carlson says, are Dr. Billy and Kimberley Campbell of Memorial Ecosystems, founded in 1996 in Westminster, South Carolina. Their idea is to use green cemeteries to preserve open space. You can be buried at the Campbells' first green cemetery, Ramsey Creek Preserve, in Westminster, and visitors can walk on trails through 32 acres of mixed woodlands and open fields there.

In Florida, a green cemetery called Glendale Memorial Preserve is being established to save a 350-acre family farm from development. And groups in several other states, including Colorado, California, New York, Washington and Wisconsin, have efforts under way to establish green cemeteries that center on land preservation. In Canada, the Memorial Society of British Columbia also has a formally funded green-burial initiative under way.

The first burial at Ramsey Creek Preserve occurred in the fall of 1998; to date, 17 more have taken place. Another 50 persons have purchased sites. A casket burial there costs about $2,500. Burial of cremated remains is only $500; scattering of cremated remains is $250. Stone grave markers and engraving are optional; the stones are $25; engraving ranges from $125 to $300. Caskets are not included.

Dr. Campbell says people seem to want to be buried there because of the site's natural beauty, the lower cost and the land preservation effort. Bodies usually arrive for burial at Ramsey Creek Preserve via a local, independent funeral home, whose owner has agreed to hold them under refrigeration until delivery to the preserve. The nature of any graveside ceremony is determined by the families. "Whatever spiritual bent you bring to the preserve, our natural landscape is very healing," Kimberley Campbell says. "What we do is very simple, but there is something very, very special about the simplicity of it."

The rules at both Ramsey Creek and Glendale Preserves are simple: No embalming, no casket unless it is biodegradable, no vault and no stone that can be pushed over. Kimberley Campbell says they advocate natural burial as the best choice and cremation as the second best because cremation uses energy and releases toxins into the environment. Natural burial really isn't a new idea, she adds. "It's thousands of years old, and the reason is, it's a very natural, effective way to dispose of a person's remains." And wouldn't it be wonderful to visit a loved one's grave site along a beautiful prairie trail, in a towering New England forest or other quiet place of natural beauty?

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