Greensprings celebrating a decade of natural burials

By Eric Banford

Tompkins Weekly

 

NEWFIELD – If you visited Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve without knowing it was a burial ground, you would never guess that people were laid to rest there. Located in Newfield, it covers 130 acres of rolling meadows and quaint evergreen groves, and is surrounded by 8,000 acres of protected forests. It’s the perfect place, quite literally, to get away from it all.

Founded in 2006 by a small persistent crew with a vision to preserve some open space, Greensprings is now celebrating its 10th year.

To mark the milestone, there will be a public celebration from 2-5 p.m. Saturday, September 24. The afternoon will be filled with fellowship, entertainment and education about Greensprings on the property at 293 Irish Hill Road in Newfield. There will be activities for all ages: Music, magic, juggling, light refreshments, a bird walk with a noted ornithologist, and walking tours for those who want to learn about green burial.

As its website states, Greensprings “offers a sustainable, natural alternative to conventional burials, without embalming fluids, high-cost coffins, concrete vaults and fancy gravestones. At Greensprings, burial is simple. People make their return to the Earth in a way that celebrates how they lived their lives. Settling burial mounds, some marked with a flat field stone, blend in with their natural settings.”

Mary Woodsen, a Greensprings co-founder, is now on the advisory board of the Green Burial Council of North America.

“This is an underground movement with planetary implications,” she said. “I’m just thrilled we made it to 10 years.”

According to Woodsen, the original idea for Greensprings came from a conversation she had with Tom Eisner and Carl Leopold.

“It was a cold January day in 2000, the wind was whipping along, and Tom says, ‘You know, I’ve got this idea…’,” she said. “He wasn’t really thinking of burial, he was thinking more about ways to memorialize people with a plaque at the entryway to a nature preserve.

“I started researching this, and came across Billy Campbell in South Carolina, who had started Ramsey Creek Preserve (the first green funeral nature preserve in the US) in 1998,” Woodsen added.

She then visited Campbell to witness a natural burial, and came away really inspired.

“I came back and tried to talk to Tom and others involved into the burial part, but they thought it would be too hard,” Woodsen said. “And then by sheer accident, there’s Jen Johnson and Susan Thomas in Corning with roughly the same idea at the same time, and they’re also thinking burial. So we joined forces and we began.”

After some initial concerns from the Newfield town board, Greensprings got approval from New York state to proceed, and despite having very little resources, they “dug in.” The first burial was for Caissa Wilmer, a member of the Finger Lakes Land Trust, and an avid birder and ardent environmentalist.

“Green burial is an opportunity to go back to the old fashioned way of burying people,” said Herb Engman, president of the Greensprings Board of Trustees. “The idea is not to preserve the body for as long as possible, the goal is to allow it to deteriorate as quickly as possible.

“So we try to not separate the earth from the body. It’s also a way to preserve the land for wildlife,” he added. “We have a contract with the Fish and Wildlife Service to mow part of the property with grassland species in mind.”

In the U.S., on average, a cemetery buries 1,000 gallons of embalming fluid, 100 tons of steel, 2,000 tons of concrete, and 56,000 board feet of high quality hardwood in just one acre of land. With 22,500 cemeteries in the U.S., and considering fertilizers and pesticides for lawn care, that’s a lot of resources and pollution year after year. Natural burial has very little of that.

“It feels great to be celebrating 10 years knowing that so many families have been able to have a different experience at a time of sadness and loss,” said co-founder Jennifer Johnson, who serves as the burial coordinator. “I’m very happy that we are able to provide this service as it seems to take a little of the ‘sting’ out at a difficult time.

“Nature is very nurturing. I think it absorbs a lot of the sadness on that hilltop during burials as families help with returning their loved ones to the Earth, which in turn helps them with closure,” she added. “Many have shared how much it meant to them to bury their loved on land that is so full of Nature. It’s very real, simple and it makes sense. People are ready for that.”

To date there have been nearly 250 burials, and around 1,000 people own plots for their families.

“This has become quite a movement and is successful far beyond my original expectation,” Engman said.

And finally, there’s the social aspect of natural burial.

“When you actually lower your beloved dead into the ground yourself, and you put in those shovels full of dirt, we’ve seen people transformed,” said Woodsen.

Engman recalled four brothers who insisted on filling in the dirt for their father’s grave.

“It was a moving experience to watch them participate in that way,” he said.

For more information about Greensprings, visit naturalburial.org, call (607) 564-7577, or email info@naturalburial.org.