Hello and happy (snowy) Earth Day from Vermont Natural Burial!

Often when people talk about natural burial, they talk about how important it is to have a connection to a sense of place. While this can mean a place we have a connection to, it also means our place as of part of the ecosystem that connects and fuels our planet.

"...What could it mean to truly belong to a place? It isn't simply about whether or not you were born there. It is about whether your identity has been and is being in some way shaped by that place; having a sense that its stories, its topography, its weather, have formed you - formed your character and your values. It is feeling yourself to be profoundly rooted in the sand or soil of a place, having both a deep knowledge of and a sense of affinity with the non-human others which inhabit it along with you - both plant and animal. It's about experiencing your place as living, as animate. It's about... seeing yourself as inextricable from it..." Sharon Blackie

For those of us who live in central Vermont, whether because we were born here and chose to stay or because we were drawn here, Sharon Blackie’s words highlight what it means to have found our sense of place and call this land home.

Natural burial challenges us to see ourselves as part of this land we have chosen, as part of a greater cycle of nurturing and sustaining through the relationship of life and death. For although it is true we are an inextricable part of the greater ecosystem, this fact is perhaps never more obvious than when offer our bodies to become nutrients for the soil of our home place through natural burial.

This history of human burial is as old as the history of human civilization. Even the most ancient burial practices denoted burial grounds as sacred spaces. At Vermont Natural Burial we are striving to create such a space in the heart of the land that calls to us as our home. And, in doing so, preserve and protect that sense of place and home for new people to come and discover their own bond with the land, their own reasons for calling it home, and celebrating their connection to it.

Please tell people about Vermont Natural Burial. All our past newsletters are here on the website. You can join our mailing list and keep up to date with all of the developments at the cemetery.

Thank you,

The Vermont Natural Burial Team