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June 27, 2023
“The soil is the great connector of life, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life.” Wendell Berry The Unsettling of America
This article was inspired by a conversation with a neighbor. She asked me “What do you think of human composting?” Also called green burial or natural organic reduction, this is a process where the body is laid in a bed of wood chips, alfalfa, straw and other organic materials and allowed to decompose naturally, which takes about 8-12 weeks. While writing this article I found out it's actually illegal in all but the 6 states of California, Washington, Oregon, Vermont, Colorado and New York. After 2-3 months of composting the body, one cubic yard of soil remains—around 10 standard wheelbarrows worth. Decomposing our body in this way allows our death to bring about new life, returning nutrients to the soil.
Lacquered wood and metal caskets, often interred in a plastic or cement vault, were popularized in the early 1800s to prevent grave robbing. These coffins and embalming fluids require immense resources, and inhibit nutrients from returning to the soil. The body’s transformation into soil is natural and beautiful, just as all bodies will transform back into soil. The soil is full of life, and is alive itself. It is also a final resting place and grave. The exchange goes on and on, round and round, the Wheel of Life rising out of the soil, descending into it, through the bodies of creatures.
I watch our soil change with the seasons. Full of nutrients and life in the spring, after a winter of rain and rest. A fresh dressing of cow, horse, and chicken manures. Full of earthworms, fungi, and thousands of microbes. As spring turns to summer the soil begins to dry out from lack of rain , rising temperatures, and incessant wind here on the coast. In late fall the fruit trees start losing their leaves, laying down a blanket of rich debris to protect the soil during winter. Winter, a time of raging Pacific storms bringing heavy rains.
We have very heavy dense soil here on our homestead as we are located in the foothills flood plain of the Santa Cruz mountains. This particular property used to be a gravel road to the farm behind. The soil was compacted so badly we couldn’t even get a shovel in to dig. One of our biggest tasks is rebuilding a healthy soil structure. When a tree falls on our property we mulch it and put it back on the earth. We have a worm composting area, 2 structures made of recycled pallets for yard and garden clippings, as well as a tumbler for food scraps. We keep this kitchen waste in a sealed tumbler to prevent rodents from feasting on it. Healthy soil regulates moisture, sequesters carbon, and provides habitat and food for hundreds of thousands of plants, animals, fungi, worms, microorganisms. The soil can only become healthy by things being continually eaten and broken down by other bodies.
Everything is food for something else. My teacher in India, Swami Premananda, always says this. No matter how many times something is eaten and broken down, it exists just to be food for something else. In this way, the soil is life and a grave at the same time. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), about 55 percent of all garbage in the U.S. is buried in landfills, more than 139 million tons. Next time you throw something into your trash bin, imagine it buried in the earth.
Or better yet, next time you reach for something to buy, I mean anything…clothes, food wrapped in packaging at the grocery store, home goods, etc. imagine your hands burying it in the earth and then ask yourself again do I really need this? Or do I want this to ultimately be buried in the earth. Think of the material goods you once yearned for years back. Fill in the blank with the endless goods out there on the market. Where are those things now? The average landfill size is 600 acres. With over 3,000 active landfills in the United States, as much as 1,800,000 acres of habitat have been lost. We are literally destroying habitat to bury our trash.
While the household recycling and composting rates have increased over the last 60 years, we need to continue making progress to become better stewards of the land and reduce our footprint on this earth. The health of our soil is crucial for maintaining healthy ecosystems and growing nourishing food. We have all heard the verse from Genesis “ashes to ashes, earth to earth.” It is not only a call to awaken our humility but also an acknowledgement of the literal elemental matter from which we are made and will one day return.
Without proper care for the land we can have no community, because without proper care for it we will have no life.
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