Into the trees

take a good look
as this garden knows no borders
these are the people
who have lived here before us
not always appreciated or concrete
the task resting
now upon our shoulders
their remainders underneath our feet

This is how the process works; After you have taken your last breath, you are placed in an egg-shaped pod. The shape of an egg, oval, secludes your body within a cocoon of biodegradable material (Capsula Mundi, 2020; Relive, 2020). Where before, during the transition to a sustainable form of a burial, ashes were placed in biodegradable urns, now, we are all placed back into a fetal position. Back to the shape in which our life originated. Buried as seeds, now again at once with the earth. The trees serving as memorials of those who have come and lived in the communities before us. Now you might wonder, why did we ever do it differently? This way, we go back to our roots (no pun intended), embrace the cycle of life and stay connected to the earth and to those we have lost. Our local initiative, relive, has worked with tree experts for almost 75 years, to make sure the trees planted are with the planet and our community in mind (Relive, 2020).

What do you think now you know the lands around you are an actual burial space? Or did you know this all along? Feel free to leave any thoughts here; it is an open space.
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Did you know that a great deal of the forests surrounding you, the ones you walk or cycle through as you visit your friends in another village hub, the ones you visit with your family, the ones you go in to pick your mushrooms, not only are a place of life, but also a way to remember the dead? What first started out, back in the beginning of the 21st century, as stone tombs dominated and certain parks were related to a feeling of death, a graveyard. However, over the past 50 years, these graveyards of the death have been transformed into the forests of life, the one’s you are probably surrounded with right now. A sustainable death has become a normality, the forests places to roam and walk through, a tranquil space. Even if we die, ways have been found so we no longer do we harm the planet. No longer do we damage soil, the earth. Instead, we use trees indigenous to the region, like oaks and firs.

In the beginning of the 21st century and long before that, the conventional form of a burial, usually meant the body would be placed in an airtight, usually wooden or sometimes carton boxes. In contrary to our society today, a burial or cremation was not Carbon neutral. The body would then decompose anaerobically. As with decay of other organisms (or organic waste). A lack of oxygen results in the production of methane, which is a gas greatly contributing to climate change (with an impact of 25 times of CO2’s capability of trapping radiation) (IPCC, 2007). Even more so, emissions were produced in the transport and construction of the caskets, the maintenance of the burial fields. Land that previously could be worked with in terms of growing crops or as forests actually contributing to combatting climate change by taking CO2 out of the air.