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More picking eco-friendly resting place for burials |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Tuesday, 12 August 2003 |
More picking eco-friendly resting place for burials
Posted Monday, August 11, 2003 - 8:11 pm
By Jason Zacher
ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER
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Greenville News
http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2003/08/11/2003081111790.htm
WESTMINSTER — Dr. Billy Campbell knows exactly how and where he will be buried. It will be a few miles from the Sumter National Forest and light years from a customary cemetery.
He doesn't want manicured lawns sprayed with pesticides and herbicides. He doesn't want rows and rows of plastic flowers. He'll be buried in the forest, near his beloved Ramsey Creek.
"A lot of people think the traditional way is very sterile and does not reflect a person's life or values," said Kimberly Campbell, Billy's wife and the supervisor of the day-to-day operations for their company, Memorial Ecosystems.
The Campbells did their first burial in the Ramsey Creek Preserve five years ago. They specialize in providing ecologically friendly burials with no embalming chemicals, no vaults that will sit in the ground for eternity and no giant, polished, gray headstones.
Removing the trappings of traditional burials also trims the cost. A burial at Memorial Ecosystems can cost $3,000 less than the average funeral.
Instead, the Campbells walk through a 32-acre nature preserve complete with hiking trails and endangered species. Just a minute or so down the North Ridge Trail, there's a mound of dirt surrounded by wildflowers. Upon further inspection, there's a small rock that reads: "Clyde Hunt." Hunt was flown up, unembalmed, from Florida last November.
Twenty people have been buried at Ramsey Creek, Campbell said, and another three dozen have bought plots. He has heard from several hundred others who are interested in the preserve, he said.
Two people who have purchased plots are Babs McDonald and her husband, Ken Cordell. They are Forest Service employees and residents of Athens, Ga.
McDonald said when she walked through the preserve and reached the creek, she knew that's where she wanted to be.
"People laugh about it and say, 'Why would you care? You're not going to hear the creek,'" she said. "We don't know that. Maybe I will, but anybody who walks down this way to visit me will hear the creek."
McDonald and Cordell got engaged on a backpacking trip along the Chattooga River — less than 25 miles away.
Simple idea, lofty goals
The Campbells know they're not going to put the traditional cemeteries out of business, but the Ramsey Creek Preserve has drawn international attention. Other people have taken the idea and opened nature preserves in the panhandle of Florida and in New Zealand.
The Campbells tried to purchase land for a similar preserve in San Diego from the Nature Conservancy, but the group sold the land to San Diego County for use in a network of county preserves, a Nature Conservancy spokeswoman said. The Campbells said groups in South America and Japan have contacted them.
Billy Campbell cites numerous historical references that people in the 1700s and 1800s were buried in pastoral settings — even Jean Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher who influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Then, in the 1900s, cities and other governments began to set aside memorial parks, Campbell said. That was the prelude to modern cemeteries.
"I kept wishing I would find something that would enable me to be buried in an environmentally sensitive fashion," McDonald said. "I knew a long time ago I just wanted to be put in the ground."
The Campbells' goal is to preserve a million acres through similar nature preserves and cemeteries and play a crucial part in the expensive and growing field of ecological restoration.
"If we're down on the coast, we can restore long-leaf pine. If we're here, we can restore Eastern meadowlands," Campbell said. "The idea is that ecological restoration is very expensive. How do you raise money for that and preserve this land for the long term?"
A basic burial at the site can cost as little as $2,400, according to the company's literature. Plots are less than $1,000. The grave markers are rocks taken from the preserve and carved locally. Opening and closing the grave costs between $250 and $500 or less if families want to do it themselves. The average cost of a traditional burial is more than $5,000, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
A cooperative attitude — where people can be as involved as they want to be — helps the families cope, Kimberly Campbell said.
"The traditional way is very sterile and doesn't always suit the values or lifestyle of the individual," she said. "People are looking for more intimate, unique ways."
Overcoming misconceptions
The Campbells and their business have dealt with a lot of bad feelings. National media have painted them as quirky Southerners — an image Billy Campbell said wasn't helped when he took the reporter out in a '56 Chevy.
And people assume being buried in a nature preserve is something for pagans, which Billy Campbell said couldn't be further from the truth.
"We've had more Southern Baptist services than anything else," he said.
People also assume burials without caskets, without embalming, and less than six feet deep are illegal, the Campbells said. Caskets and embalming are not required in South Carolina, said Dwight Hayes, administrator for the state Board of Funeral Service. The only requirements for depth of burial are for vaults, which are not used at Ramsey Creek.
Billy Campbell said there's no single kind of person who has been buried at Ramsey Creek. They've had people buried without caskets, flown in from Florida the day before, and they've had people buried in overalls with Willie Nelson playing on a stereo.
"When you've got people buried out there, and your grandfather is buried there, your grandma is buried there, your father and your sister, it makes the land different," Campbell said. "We hope people will see this as a nature preserve where people happen to be buried."
McDonald said her mother and sister have visited the preserve and are interested in being buried at Ramsey Creek.
"Because it's natural, that's what's supposed to happen to us," McDonald said. "My body's been good to me, but I won't need it anymore."
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