The Deathcare Revolution is Born
The Natural Burial Movement Is Born At Ramsey Creek Preserve
Dr. Billy Campbell and Kimberley Campbell, co-founders of Ramsey Creek Preserve and the Conservation Burial Alliance (RCPreserve photos used with permission)
Dr. Billy Campbell has a noble long term goal for the Conservation burial movement: to dedicate over a million acres to conservation burials in America within this century. In 1998 his mission started with Ramsey Creek Preserve, a small acreage that has since expanded to 78 acres with over a mile of creek frontage. “The original 33 acre site protected a quarter mile of Ramsey Creek. The stream drops along 5 rock shoals, providing the sound of falling water throughout the preserve. The land sits at the biological crossroads between the mountains and Piedmont, has a significant area never plowed and consequently has an impressive 330 species of vascular plants. The diversity also extends to animals including the occasional black bear… Conservation burial preserves are nature preserves that allow for the sacred burial of human remains. These protected lands are economical, natural, and environmentally responsible natural areas that are specifically designed to save and restore significant wildlands and habitat for plants and animals. Burial on conserved land provides a deep connection to the land for friends and families whose loved ones are there.”
Ramsey Creek aims to unite the needs of ecosystems and the community. The burial ground has so far buried 700 patrons, with an additional 1000 pre-need sales. Their patrons are mostly local to the region, and share a love of nature as well as deathcare that gives back to the land. They have also renovated a small historic former church/community school building from 1924 now used for memorials, celebrations of life, weddings, and baby blessings. The idea is that life and death are intertwined as found in natural cycles. A 30-minute documentary, “Dying Green” is available on the internet to learn about the evolution and work of Ramsey Creek Preserve.
In 2006, Ramsey Creek Preserve worked with the South Carolina-based non-profit land trust Upstate Forever to create an agreement that permanently ensures that the site will be forever wild. The agreement includes a management fund to protect the site no matter what becomes of Memorial Ecosystems’ current management. Ramsey Creek also became the Green Burial Council’s first Certified Conservation Burial Ground in the US with the culmination of the protection agreement. As is required for Conservation burial ground certification, Upstate Forever holds the easement on the property, now held permanently in perpetuity.
With Conservation burials, a land trust holds the easement on the property, which they describe as "a voluntary contract between a landowner and a qualified land trust that allows the landowner to legally restrict certain land uses from occurring on their property. This agreement is permanent and remains with the land even after it has been sold or willed to heirs. Conservation agreements typically prevent land uses such as residential subdivisions, commercial or industrial operations, and mining, while allowing traditional rural land uses, such as farming, grazing, hunting, and timbering to continue. Land trusts work primarily to secure easements for lands that are the most critical in terms of habitat and water quality.” -from the Memorial Ecosystems website
Dr. Campbell reports on his website that “Ramsey Creek has served as a laboratory for developing the specific techniques for natural interment and project design.” It was at the Preserve that Billy developed most of the standards for what is now known as Conservation burial. He has spoken to numerous groups over the years, including the Natural Areas Association, the Society for Ecological Restoration, the Land Trust Alliance, and many others. The Campbells have also participated in the development of numerous other projects.
The mission of its larger business, Memorial Ecosystems, is “to develop multi-functional memorial nature preserves that we create with the cooperation and assistance of non-profit organizations. Through becoming members of the preserve during life, and choosing burial in the preserve after, our clients leave a permanent legacy for their families, their communities and the natural world. We are committed to being the leaders in environmentally and socially responsible deathcare.” The Campbells’ wisdom and experience is highly regarded in the natural burial movement, with many years of providing solutions to the modern death industry.
“It’s been a 40-year experience for us,” said Dr. Campbell, who originally came up with the idea in 1977 in an ecology course at Emory College. “Our original intention was to bury people to save land. First was a stillborn child of friends, then a friend from a car accident solidified the rightness of it. When you bury the first body it changes the feel of the land. Connecting people to the land was always at the core.” The land becomes especially sacred when you bury a friend, family members, and loved ones.
A natural funeral procession at Ramsey Creek:“It’s a deep human desire that’s thousands of years old to be connected to nature in death.” -Kimberley Campbell (Photo courtesy of Memorial Ecosystems)
Dr. Campbell also offers consulting for projects seeking advice around conservation burial development. Campbell explains, “While green burial is grounded in simplicity, [the] land selection, legal issues, start-up, marketing and the nuts and bolts of doing green burial in a way that restores the land are all issues that need to be carefully considered and executed.” As pioneers of conservation burial in the U.S., Billy and Kimberley have assisted many landowners and groups with information and site visits by offering fee-for service consulting with over twenty years of experience in the business.
Mark Harris discussed Ramsey Creek Preserve in his groundbreaking book Grave Matters, published shortly after the Green Burial Council (GBC) was formed by Joe Sehee in California in 2005. Harris wrote, “My forays into the new deathscape turned up vegetarians, massage therapists, Waldorf school teachers, as well as one amateur organic gardener who wore dreadlocks and idolized Bob Marley. It's a mistake, though, to categorize all, or even most adherents of this form of alternative burial as habitues of Whole Foods Markets or hybrid-drive motorists. In my experience, the majority largely comprise what for lack of better description I'd simply call 'regular' folk. In addition to those above, my research put me in touch with a hospital nurse, a court stenographer, an elementary school teacher, and...Gen X to the Greatest Generation.”
A family member sprinkles petals over a natural wood casket in saying goodbye to their loved one.
(Photos courtesy of Ramsey Creek Preserve)
Children of all ages find that a conservation burial can be “fun, in a weird sort of way”
When I interviewed Kimberley Campbell of Ramsey Creek Preserve, she said that some of the most memorable burials happen when children come with their families to the Preserve. Their families inform them that they are going to the woods for a burial, and they end up finding evidence in nature that death is natural, beautiful, and can be seen in an old tree, while a new sapling is rising up next to it. Invariably, she says, the boys run for the woods, where they find all kinds of sticks which become bow and arrows in their imaginations.
One boy said he discovered that “death can be fun, in a weird sort of way.” It doesn’t have to be a morbid, uptight affair. Parents can guide children to find “treasures” from the woods such as sticks and pinecones that are no longer living, or discover mosses, berries and leaves that are still connected to a tree in life. Children are delighted to find life and death co-existing harmoniously in nature. Experiences of joy, celebration, and even “fun” can happen in a natural setting, and a “good time” can happen for children of all ages, depending on the particular family’s comfort with nature and the cause of death.
As manager of the Preserve for over twenty years, Kimberley believes that what keeps people from learning more about conservation burials is the obvious fact that there aren’t enough certified preserves, but also NDD, Nature Deficit Disorder. Many Americans suffer from this, and so when it comes to deathcare for themselves or a family member, they don’t consider the healing that can be found at a burial preserve. She describes how when children (of all ages) experience nature at the Preserve, death becomes easier to cope with--you feel you are part of some greater pattern of order in the universe. Giving back your body for the benefit of the earth, for soil regeneration, for the benefit of future generations, is enormously comforting as well.
Our bodies are made up of the same elements found in nature—we are a part of nature. To spend time in nature, seeing how death and rebirth are always evident in it, helps change our attitudes around death. Grief and joy, life, death and rebirth, are all part of Nature’s great plan. Whether you are a believer in God or an atheist, we are all part of Nature, which has sustained us over our lives with food and clean water. For millions of years, it has been the human yearning to live as part of nature, part of some vast and great mystery of life and death.
A natural wicker baby's casket receives flowers as a reminder of hope for new life to come.
Some of the many rare native plants that have returned with conservation efforts.
(Photos courtesy of Ramsey Creek Preserve)
Native fungi are signs of a developing mature ecosystem
Rare native wildflowers at Ramsey Creek Preserve, South Carolina
(Photo: Ramsey Creek)
The healing power of nature is found in Conservation Cemeteries
One family who had a stillborn baby were able to find enormous healing at the Preserve, revealing the healing powers as found in nature. A community midwife who developed breast cancer in mid-life decided she wished to be buried at the Preserve. A whole community of children and babies from decades of her care attended her graveside funeral at Ramsey Creek. Children at all stages and ages found a wonderful celebration of her life, with babies, toddlers, and teens patting and piling up her mound, which she would have taken great delight in! Everyone helped decorate her sturdy cardboard casket with colors and expressions of love and gratitude for the caring she brought to all.
Just like birth, death can be a “birth” into a new journey. With the model of Nature, we find that death is just a small part in the ongoing process of regeneration into new life. We’re comforted in knowing that our bodies can leave a legacy of growth and restoration for generations to come…