Do we do death wrong? We suck the blood out, fill our veins with chemicals, we have our faces painted, we are put in expensive coffins and buried facing east. To sit up when Jesus returns. If you've been to an open casket funeral, the faces never look quite right. The hope is that grandma would look like she's sleeping. But there is some subtle wrongness. The Madame Tussaud’s effect. The uncanny valley. It's perverse, but you can't quite say why. A puffiness perhaps. And if this doesn't interest us, we'll be cremated. Which has about the same carbon footprint of driving 800 miles in a car. Better, but still. I've had many of these conversations with @johnchristianphifer. He helped start @naturalburial, a land conservation natural burial organization that has changed the way I see death. It's about 1/3 the cost of other options. Just as humans and cultures have done for hundreds of thousands of years: Your body feeds the soil, returns to the earth from whence it came. You aren't a mummified plastic toy. You're nature returning to herself. And by being buried like this, you help protect hundreds of acres from development, erosion, and abuse. John Christian is full of startling facts. 'Did you know that the reason people get embalmed is because of the Civil War? When Lincoln was assassinated, America was mourning. And they had the idea to try experimental embalming, to preserve his body so it could be put on a train and sent around America for weeks, so people could see it. That funeral tour was so major, that it became en vogue to get embalmed like Lincoln.' A graveyard is beautiful, so is sprinkling ashes into the ocean or under a tree. However it’s done, it can be a profound celebration of life, or sincere embodiment of mourning. But this natural burial stuff feels right in my gut. I'm looking at my hands as I type. One day they'll be food for worms. I'm into it. As Tolstoy said of life, I want 'the possibility of being useful.' So too in death. 📷: @johnchristianphifer