Take a walk in a forest for a moment. Close your eyes and imagine the sounds of the birds and the crickets, the temperature of the air against your skin, the vibrant green and subdued brown of trees and the carpet of last year’s leaves. Smell the scent of decay and growth. Notice the sun dappling through the branches dancing across canopies and bark.
It’s not hard to see in a forest the rich tapestry and web of community that exists there, that’s what makes it strong & resilient. There are usually many established and growing trees, but also wise elders and baby saplings. There may be families of oaks interspersed with maples, groves of tulip poplars beside hickories, all intermingled with sweet gums and pines. There are innumerable birds, insects, and fungi making a living among the branches, roots, and trunks. Moss and lichens, stone and soil. The new growth paves the way for the hardwoods, the mycelium carry messages, and the song birds tell stories of what’s above and below. The dead in the forest are venerated for years to come. The way a whalefall feeds generations, a fallen tree in the forest becomes food and fodder for infinite beings. The dead are woven back into the living. We have much to learn from these earth teachers about life and death and community. In my experience, they all go hand in hand. Fostering a relationship with death invites us to savor the preciousness of life. Living more fully prepares us for death. And community seems to be the thread that winds its way through all of it. We weren’t meant to do this alone.
Like many in 2021, I found myself disconnected and at a threshold. I took a risk and moved from Pennsylvania to the loft of a barn on what is now the farm at Common Ground Ecovillage, an agrarian intentional community in Mebane. This was on the heels of accompanying my grandfather through his death, which was a catalyst for me in understanding the possibility of death as a healing, an invitation into deeper connection rather than the isolation that so often accompanies those who are grieving in our shared culture.
The barn at the Farm at Common Ground Ecovillage, photo by Lara Struckman
Sweet potato planting party at Common Ground Ecovillage, photo by Lara Struckman
What I found while living and working at the farm at Common Ground was a rich intergenerational community centered around the fields, creeks, and forests of those gorgeous 112 acres. I also learned the stories of human and non human kin and got to taste the fruits of many plants and relationships. I companioned countless plants from seed to sprout to fruit to decay again and again and again. Tending them in each phase of their life cycle with care and appreciation, gratitude for the unique gifts that each season brings and seeing it all as valuable, essential. Not just the part where we humans get something tangible to eat from the plant, but all that comes before and after. I realized humans are not that different. There are rich gifts-tangible and intangible that we offer and receive throughout every stage of our own life cycle and it is often through community and relationship that those gifts are actualized and appreciated.
Marking time together through weather changes, new crops, and seasonal rituals returned me to the larger clock of life. Not that of the hours in a day, but the moments of beauty and mystery in a life.
A jewel of an eggplant just harvested at Common Ground, photo by Lara Struckman
Altar at Grandmother Oak at Common Ground, photo by Lara Struckman
Connections I made at Common Ground eventually lead me to Bluestem, a burgeoning conservation cemetery, just as they found the land and began visioning turning tired corn and tobacco fields to native wildflower meadows and a sanctuary for green burial. Again, I found myself in a community of people rebuilding relationships with land and with the cycles of life. Quite literally immersing themselves back into the soil and clay of the landscape.
It has become a place for the living and the dead to be in community, those who are buried there are often referred to as the ‘residents’ of Bluestem, valuable neighbors and community members. Bluestem has sought to reimagine the cemetery not just as a place of mourning, but also a place of life, of joy, and community.
Wildflower meadow at Bluestem Conservation Cemetery, photo by Lara Struckman
Sign at Bluestem, courtesy of Bluestem
Lately, I have been tending to community in a new place- Heartward Sanctuary in Siler City. Here, they also provide green burial for folks in their community, ecstatic dance, seasonal rituals, and the newest endeavour- the Field to Shroud project. Inspired by the important work and contributions of Death Midwife, Katherine Savage, a group of us have been accompanying flax plants through their lifecycle and our own, starting with golden seeds and completing in time with a communally woven linen burial shroud, sharing ancestral stories and songs throughout, weaving ourselves into a shared fabric of place.
Barn Temple at Heartward Sanctuary set up for Lammas celebration/ritual, photo by Lara Struckman
Harvested flax at Heartward Sanctuary for Field to Shroud project, photo by Lara Struckman
It is through our search for a meaningful life that we cultivate community and if we’re lucky that community will enliven us to think more beautifully and intentionally about our dying time and what we may offer through our life, and our death, back to the earth from which we came.
Earth teaches us to tend life with death, and to tend death with our aliveness. The best way we can honor our beloved dead- whether animal, vegetable, or mineral- is to continue to live on their behalf. Earth honoring and land based communities feel like a way to do that. To live in such a way that our deaths can nourish what’s next and offer up something better to the future generations than what we’ve been given. To embrace the beauty of change and to build collective and individual resilience through a diverse and interwoven root system.
We are blessed to be surrounded not only by rich and plentiful forests in the Piedmont, but also nourishing and visionary communities finding a way back to the land and to each other.
If you feel a hankering in your bones to root more deeply into a community of human and more than human kin you might explore the gifts of these three communities (or the many others) who have brought me strength, beauty and togetherness in fragile times. Like the wise trees of the forest, by rooting deep, we rise up.
Photo description by order of appearance:
- The barn at the Farm at Common Ground Ecovillage
- Sweet potato planting party at Common Ground Ecovillage
- A jewel of an eggplant just harvested at Common Ground
- Altar at Grandmother Oak at Common Ground
- Wildflower meadow at Bluestem Conservation Cemetary
- Sign at Bluestem, courtesy of Bluestem
- Barn Temple at Heartward Sanctuary set up for Lammas celebration/ritual
- Harvested flax at Heartward Sanctuary for Field to Shroud project
Grateful to you, dear Lara, for your attention to land and community, your poetic expressions, and the imporant and necessary space you create for grief. Your thoughtful meditations are fondly remembered at Bluestem and woven into the pathways, meadows and woods, on this land. We send love for your continued journeying!