Planning To Get Planted: A Lenten Carbon Fast Challenge



A Tree Makes
The Perfect Headstone!

Today's Lenten Carbon Fast challenge: (courtesy of Small Footprints)

"Though it may be challenging to contemplate, think about greening your "final arrangements." Visit http://www.greenamerica.org/  or http://www.greenburials.org/  for more information."

I've talked this over with The Lovely Wife. My first thought was to have my ashes mixed with clay, then rolled into drawing pencils for her to scetch with. That way, whenever anyone asks where I am, she can say, "Over there, on the wall!"


She's quite good at scetching, when the impulse strikes, but she rolls her eyes whenever I make this suggestion, so perhaps she may not thinks it's as funny as I do (...a guy figures these things out, after enough years of marriage!!)
So I came up with an alternative idea: plant my body under an tree.

I'm not sure how to deal with the public health concerns, but otherwise it just makes sense for my body, untreated (...and with all the useful stuff removed for transplants and science ... although I intend to die at so advanced and age, after so much living, that the parts would be useful only to a museum ...) to go back into the soil. Wrap it in paper or cotton, if that's more esthetic, then let the natural processes take back what I've taken from them. I won't mind; I'm not there.

An apple tree would be very nice. The blossoms are great and the fruit so tasty! But other trees are good too; the important thing is that it fit on the site so the tree has a natural lifespan. If it started as a sapling, it would long outlast anyone who remembers me, and give shade and other services to passers-by much better than a stone.
One of my happiest childhood memories is climbing a cedar tree; wouldn't it be amusing to have a cedar tree climb me?