These are the first occupants of the wooded area set aside by Wildwood Cemetery for their “green burial” option. Here everything conforms to nature. Even the caskets, made from natural materials, are lowered into the ground by a thick fiber rope. A small marker is the only sign that the ground has been disturbed. They are barely noticeable as the leaves have already reclaimed their space.

“It’s a lot more natural, and then it also has a much more personal touch to it,” said Kaleb Hipple, manager at Wildwood.

“On the on the topic of personal touch,” Hipple continued, “the way that we have been treating this section is, if a family is interested in using a grave space up here, or they would like to be buried in a green burial way, I bring them up here and explain to them that anywhere from that log row that’s laying down there down, they’re able to pick an area, and then we just make sure and confirm with our foreman that it’s viable for burial.”

To be viable, the site can’t be too close to trees so that the machines to dig the hole can be brought in. If everything is okay, then the burial can take place in the spot chosen..

KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette General Manager of Wildwood Cemetery Caleb Hipple talks about the Green burials offered at the cemetery..

“They’re able to pick a spot that speaks to them, either over here in the canopy section or just over there, where you can see those flowers starting to sprout up. That’s our meadow section. Those are all PA native wildflowers that are there,” he said.

Hipple said that he always questions whether they have other family members buried in the cemetery. If they say no, then he asks if they like trees.

“Then we try to find them a place that’s as close to the trees as possible,” he said.

Some prefer not to be surrounded by trees.

“Sometimes they’ll say, I don’t want pine cones falling on my head for the rest of eternity,” he said.

KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette The site of the Green burials offered at the Wildwood Cemetery in Williamsport.

There may be concerns about accessibility because there is only a gravel road leading back through the woods, which would make it difficult for a relative with certain issues to visit the site.

Deer roam through the wooded section set aside for the green burials, adding to the natural setting.

“One of the first green burials that we did is that stone that’s kind of square right there. That’s actually a burial that we did. We just let nature naturally take over,” Hipple said.

“What we do is we dig just a regular grave and in the bottom of the grave we put a bed of wood chips leaves that we have here at the cemetery that we kind of recycle, and that allows for a nice bed for the actual container to rest on to,” he added.

Every detail has been carefully thought through, such as the rope to lower the casket.

KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette A headstone rests at site of the Green burials offered at the Wildwood Cemetery in Williamsport.

“Whenever you have a funeral setup, you have what’s called a lowering device, a metal device with straps on it, that’s able to lower the body down in the grave. It doesn’t scream environmentally friendly. It doesn’t look like a very natural thing,” Hipple said.

“So, what we do is, we take hemp ropes, and I get five of my guys, and they come up here with me, and we put the ropes on the ground, we put the actual casket on top of the ropes, so it would be centered on here, and then one guy gets on one side and puts it over his neck, and the other guy gets on the other side and does the same thing, and then we slowly lower it into the ground,” he explained.

As far as the type of casket that is used, the type of materials used is dictated by the Green Burial Council which oversees any sort of green burial cemetery in this county and internationally. According to the council, caskets cannot be made of man-made materials.

“If you’re using some sort of casket, it’s going to be a wood casket, or even like a cardboard casket, so long as it doesn’t have man-made glues, things like that, things that aren’t biodegradable,” Hipple said.

“We do, like, pine boxes, we do cardboard, that sort of thing-that’s allowed, and then instead of a traditional headstone that’s like a mined granite or something like that, we’ll take just a natural field stone, and we have a laser engraver here, which we can laser engrave that stone and put it there at the grave site,” he said.

“That way it’s a lot less and it doesn’t go against the aesthetics of the section, and it’s a lot less invasive as well,” he added. Families can also choose to plant an approved tree to honor their loved one rather than a headstone.

Embalming fluids, which contain formaldehyde are not permitted, but the Green Burial Council has approved fluids which can be used or the remains can just be refrigerated before burial. Cremation is another option.

“You could be buried as a cremated remains as well, if you’d like, but if you prefer you can do a scattering option,” he said.

“A lot of times you know the burial process isn’t just about getting a task done, it is also about that relief of grief. It’s about processing it and actually getting through it. So, the actual act of scattering the remains is a release in itself. So, a lot of times people will think of that, they say, “I would like to go out to the ocean and do it, or “I’d like to go out to the woods and do it, but they don’t know where exactly to do it, or they say, you know, we have family up at Wildwood, but we don’t know if we can afford to do a burial,” he said.

“We’ll work with them to make sure that we can get something that’s affordable. If they don’t want to do that, but they still want to be at Wildwood, then we have that option for them. If they’d like to scatter and we’d still like to be in the woods, but we don’t want to do the burial option, because it’s a little bit more expensive, plus, you know they always said that they wanted to be scattered, so now we have that option on here as on the west side as well. We have a scattering trail there,” he said.

He pointed out that cremated remains are naturally alkaline, so you don’t always want to scatter them just the way that they are. But they can be mixed with a product called Let Your Love Grow, which will make them more like a fertilizer for scattering.

All of these options are available to families.

“We just allow the family to come up here and to walk the woods, either with their loved one, if they’re still living, in remembrance of their loved one, to see, you know, what actually speaks to them and what they feel that their loved one would kind of resonate with. And they pick a spot, and we try to accommodate the best we can. That’s how the rest of the cemetery works in general,” Hipple added.

In terms of cost, a green burial is comparable to the rest of the cemetery.

“For a traditional grave space…we charge $850 for that. What that includes is the space itself, about four feet wide by 10 feet long, and the perpetual care of that space. So, it’ll always be taken care of-if there’s sticks on it, leaves, that sort of thing-it’ll be taken care of.

In the green burial section they charge $1,000 per space, which is an extra $150. The space itself is an extra foot wider and there is a border around it to ensure that there is room so that any future nearby burials would not be disturbed.

“There is perpetual care still included, but it looks a little bit different. What we make sure is that we’re not always going to be picking up sticks and picking up leaves here. No, if there’s some sort of tree issue that’s nearby, you know, we’re going to take that into consideration and try to do our due diligence to take care of that,” he said.

“You’ll see that there’s people going towards the compostable things, especially with environmental questions and environmental concerns on the rise. That’s why we wanted to be able to offer this,” he continued.

“That way nobody felt like they had a reason to be turned away from Wildwood. We want to make sure that no matter what, if you’re somebody that you know has family here, and you just want to be buried like regular, or if you’re somebody that you’re having the worst day of your life because you just lost a loved one, and you need to just figure out what your options are, but you’re afraid that you can’t afford it. We will make it work for you,” he added.