Marin cemetery: Ashes to ashes, dust to mulch

Marsha Goldberg has every intention of pushing up daisies when she dies. Daisies, wildflowers and a big redwood tree, too.

Goldberg is calling dibs on her choice of burial sites on a hilly, forested 32-acre stretch of land in Mill Valley, where she is making plans to become fertilizer at the country’s first permanently protected cemetery, nature preserve and wildlife sanctuary.

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 22, 2004
San Francisco Chronicle

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/08/22/MNGEV8CIGT1.DTL

The plan, by the new owners of the Daphne Fernwood Cemetery, off Tennessee Valley Road in unincorporated Mill Valley, is the latest manifestation of environmentally conscious Marin County’s spiritual embrace of the extraordinary.

It is, in essence, a back-to-nature movement for the dead.

"There is something about being put into this natural setting that really, really appeals to me," said Goldberg of Daly City. "It’s the idea of being an integrated part of nature. We take so much from the earth. To give back in a small way seems the least I could do."

The grand scheme was hatched by Billy Campbell, a physician and environmentalist, Tyler Cassity, a funeral aficionado, and Joe Sehee, an expert on socially responsible business.

Their purchase of the cemetery, which will be renamed Forever Fernwood, closed escrow Thursday. The state Department of Commerce’s cemetery and funeral bureau, which licenses all private burial grounds in California, approved the transfer of title July 1.

What they plan to do is restore the native habitat of the area, establish an interpretive center and open the whole kit and caboodle up to hikers, nature lovers, schoolchildren, and even birthing and wedding ceremonies.

Traditional funerals and cremation scatterings would continue on the land, but most burials would prohibit embalming, allow only biodegradable caskets and require natural grave markers, like planted shrubs, trees or boulders.

The land would then be protected by a conservation easement, and the burial endowments would be used to maintain the park and remove eucalyptus and other nonnative species.

"It will be a nature preserve that happens to sell interment rights," Sehee said. "The concept is to sell interment rights on 5 percent of the land and use the endowment from that 5 percent to preserve the rest as open space. In essence, we will use existing cemetery law to conserve land and protect it in perpetuity with a conservation easement."

If all goes as planned, Campbell said, Daphne Fernwood would be the pilot project in a sweeping movement to protect a million acres of land over the next 30 years by turning cemeteries into open space preserves.

"We are trying to redefine what these spaces are for," Campbell said. "We want to create multiuse nature parks where people can learn about the geology, anthropology and natural history of the site in addition to learning who is buried there."

Armed with only scant information about the concept, 500 people, including Goldberg, have nonetheless put their names on a waiting list for interment in Marin County. About four dozen property owners and funeral directors from around the country have also expressed an interest in creating other nature cemeteries, Sehee said.

The idea has its roots in a burgeoning green burial movement in England, where some 150 woodland burial grounds are now in use. It is, in many ways, a rejection of a funeral industry that some feel has lost its relevance. Fewer families, especially in tough economic times, are willing to pay huge sums for a burial plot, headstone and the plush, airtight casket that is recommended.

A typical funeral in the United States now costs about $7,000, and can reach $15,000 or more depending on the burial location and various accoutrements, according to funeral industry experts. Americans spend $15 billion a year in funeral costs.

And then there’s the upkeep: Just keeping the lawns green can cost a cemetery as much as $15,000 a month.

Green cemeteries are not only a cheap alternative, but bolster the view held by a growing number of people that, upon death, human bodies should be returned to Mother Nature.

"This is not creepy Blair Witch Project stuff," Campbell said. "It’s restoring that connection between people and the land."

Campbell, 48, got the idea of a cemetery/nature preserve after his father died unexpectedly in 1985. He said the funeral was so impersonal and expensive that he began exploring alternatives.

He eventually founded Memorial Ecosystems, in Westminster, S.C., and in 1998, opened Ramsey Creek Memorial Nature Preserve, a tiny backwoods cemetery about 12 miles from the Chattooga River, where the movie "Deliverance" was filmed. The cemetery has been host to 30 green burials and has sold interment rights for about 100 more, but Campbell always had bigger plans.

It was Cassity, the president of Forever Enterprises, in Clayton, Mo., who made those plans possible.

Cassity bought Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 1998 and turned the lonely, neglected resting spot for old silver-screen stars into the kind of New Age destination spot that Tinseltown craves. He offered video tributes to the lives of the deceased, viewable for eternity at kiosks and on the Internet. His annual Rudolph Valentino film festival, held on the cemetery grounds where the star is buried, has become a phenomenon in Los Angeles, attracting thousands.

Cassity, an entrepreneur undertaker if there ever was one, was intrigued by the green cemetery concept and heard through the grapevine about Campbell’s vision, so he called him up. The two men hit it off — both convinced that the funeral industry had lost touch with the American public — and agreed to join forces with Sehee, Cassity’s publicist and an expert on nonprofits.

They began looking for a cemetery where they could combine their visions, bringing new life to the graveyard, so to speak.

Daphne Fernwood, with dozens of broken and weathered headstones from the late 19th century scattered on hillsides and amid the trees, seemed perfect. It is not only forested, but it borders miles of Golden Gate National Recreation Area land.

Cassity envisions a kind of virtual cemetery, with burial sites revealed only electronically or through the Internet.

"You would walk through with a handheld device, like a Palm Pilot, and, as you walked through, the device would be triggered by GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) points," said Cassity. "It’s the perfect marriage of the completely natural and completely virtual so that the memorial aspect is invisible unless you choose to see it."

Marin County, the nation’s unofficial capital of alternative religion, appears to be an ideal launching pad for such a project. About 80 percent of people who die in Marin are cremated, according to funeral industry experts.

Ron Hast, the editor and publisher of Mortuary Management magazine, said the soaring cremation rate is a reflection of a nationwide — albeit less pronounced — trend rejecting traditional religious funeral rites. Almost 48 percent of Californians and 27.78 percent of people nationwide choose cremation, both all-time highs, according to Cremation Association of America statistics.

"There is no better place to do this than Marin," Hast said. "They have a high cremation rate, a community that has plenty of money, and it is open to things that are unique."

Cassity said it is telling that only 15 percent of cremains scattered by the Neptune Society are witnessed or involve a ceremony and, often, relatives never even pick up remains from the funeral home.

"We want to encourage people to have memorial rituals or at least do something more than make a phone call and have the body disappear," he said.

During a recent hike through the cemetery property, Cassity stood on a hillside in the middle of a thicket, trees all around, and swept his arm from a stand of oaks across a valley toward nearby Mount Tamalpais.

"This is what the cemetery will look like," he said. "Like nature."

It is the kind of place that Goldberg wants to be, forever. She isn’t dying but likes the idea so much that she is almost looking forward to the day.

"I always wanted to be buried wrapped only in a shroud under a redwood tree," said Goldberg, who would not reveal her age, but believes she is old enough to begin contemplating her mortality. "I told them I want to be first on the list."

E-mail Peter Fimrite at [email protected].