It was four days before Christmas – the winter solstice – when Arielle and Rob Bywater buried their infant son in a plain wooden coffin on a forested bluff overlooking the Penobscot River.

The Illinois couple had always planned to deliver their son with the help of midwives in a home in Belfast, the coastal Maine town where they were married. Just weeks shy of full-term, however, something went tragically wrong in what was an otherwise healthy pregnancy.

The Bywaters decided to come to Maine nonetheless and, in keeping with their philosophy in life, sought a place where they could say goodbye to their stillborn son, whom they named Day, in a simple and all-natural way.

Their search led them to Rainbow’s End in Orrington, one of two recently created “green cemeteries” in Maine and among just a handful nationwide.

“It just seemed like the best possible way to honor the baby, and we couldn’t think of anywhere better to bury him than Maine,” Arielle Bywater said recently. “Maine is the place where we feel most comfortable in the world.”

One hundred fifty years ago, pretty much everyone in the United States went to their final resting place the same way: unpreserved and in simple wood coffins lowered into hand-dug holes.

Today, embalming is the norm in American culture. Air-tight and waterproof caskets as well as burial vaults help preserve the dead even longer but also can push the costs of a burial into the high thousands.

Yet a small but growing portion of Americans are beginning to rethink the modern approach to death.

Believers in “green” burials prefer to let nature take its course with a body rather than delay the inevitable through chemicals, high-tech caskets and cement vaults.

They are choosing to return to dust naturally in places that look more like state parks than manicured and monument-filled memorial gardens.

“They like the concept of a simple burial,” said Peter McHugh, owner of Cedar Brook Burial Ground in Limington, located west of Portland. “Of course I do. I want my body to go back to nature.”

Like most green cemeteries nationwide, Rainbow’s End and Cedar Brook have three unbendable rules: No embalming, no vaults, and bodies must be buried in plain wooden or wicker caskets, shrouds or other biodegradable materials.

Advocates say there are many reasons why people would prefer a green burial. For some, it’s the natural continuation of a “green” life, while others base their decisions on an uneasiness with the embalming process.

For some, it’s more about money. Green burials can cost thousands less than conventional burials, which can run as high as $10,000.

Both of Maine’s green cemeteries opened only recently. In fact, Day Bywater – the only burial at either cemetery to date – was interred in a family plot set aside for Rainbow’s End’s creator because the cemetery’s official registration as a nonprofit was still pending.

But organizers at both cemeteries said they are selling plots, offering tours and taking more calls as word spreads.

“Up until this time we couldn’t say ‘Yes’ because we weren’t ready,” said Joan Howard, one of the directors of the board at Rainbow’s End. “But now we’re ready.”

‘Return to nature’

Located about 10 miles south of Bangor, Rainbow’s End is 14 acres of meadows and pine forest bordering a quiet stretch of the Penobscot River. Except for an engraved boulder near Howard’s abutting farmhouse and a simple plaque in the middle of the field, this newly minted burial ground looks like any farmstead in rural New England.

And that’s exactly how it will remain, Howard said.

For more than 80 years, Ellen Hills has vacationed at a rustic camp on the property her family named for a “brilliant” rainbow that ended on the Penobscot one summer day decades ago.

Hills, now in her late 80s, tried several times to donate the land as open space or to conservation groups to protect it from development. Then she read an article on green cemeteries in the AARP bulletin.

“As soon as I read about that I said, ‘That is exactly what we should do with Rainbow’s End,'” recounted Hills, who lives in Solon.

Plots at Rainbow’s End cost $750 and can be purchased almost anywhere on the property, as long as no one else is buried within a 10-foot circle. The scattering of cremated remains is free with prior approval, although a donation is requested. And the only grave markers allowed must be native, unpolished stones flush with the ground.

Cedar Brook Burial Ground in Limington has similar rules.

“It’s what we’ve always done, until the Civil War: return to nature,” Hills said. “Just wrap me in my grandmother’s quilt and put me in the ground.”

Having options

Mark Harris, author of the signature book on the green burial trend titled “Grave Matters,” said the generation that spawned the modern environmental movement and made recycling and organic foods mainstream is primed to change the business of death.

“I think as baby boomers now retire and consider their final [days], they are going to bring that same do-it-yourself mentality and environmental consciousness … to bear,” Harris said.

Of course, this type of natural burial is nothing new. People were buried this way for millennia whether by tradition or necessity. Some religions, including Islam and some movements of Judaism, still shun or prohibit embalming with chemicals. Cremation is ubiquitous in other cultures.

Green cemeteries have been popular in the United Kingdom for decades. But the first modern green burial ground in the United States opened in Westminster, S.C., 10 years ago. The Ramsey Creek Preserve is the model on which most of its successors are based.

Though green burials still account for a tiny share of the total market, some observers insist more people and families would choose a natural path if they knew it was available. Embalming is not required in most states, including Maine, and burial vaults are often a cemetery policy.

But Harris, whose book is subtitled “A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial,” contends many families or those pre-planning their own arrangements don’t realize there are other options beyond cremation or the conventional embalming and burial package.

“Families just assume they have to do all of this stuff, and they don’t,” Harris said during a visit to Maine last fall. “If you decide not to go this route, you’re not stuck.”

Funeral directors insist their services merely reflect what most people want and expect when it comes to handling the remains of a loved one.

John Reed, president-elect of the National Funeral Directors Association and a partner at a funeral home in Webster Springs, W.Va., said he has never received a request for a green burial.

And while he respects people’s reasons for preferring natural interment, Reed said he has seen no data suggesting that green burials are better for the environment. But Reed said there is “very strong data” that conventional burial services do not harm the environment.

“There are a lot of emerging trends out there. What is right and what is wrong is not for me to say,” Reed said. “If society demands it then funeral directors will step up and offer it.”

Popularity in Maine

Others in the industry argue that Maine’s climate may limit the availability – and therefore the popularity – of green burials.

Peter Neal with Crosby & Neal funeral homes and a spokesman for the Maine Funeral Directors Association, said he had 93 bodies stored in tombs this winter that were awaiting burial when the ground thawed. That was only possible due to embalming, Neal said.

Crosby & Neal, which operates five funeral homes from Newport to Greenville, does not have refrigeration units sizeable enough to accommodate a large number of unembalmed bodies for months on end.

Neal said he has turned down pre-arrangements for people who did not want to be embalmed because of the chance that the person might die in winter. For that reason, Neal believes green cemeteries will be more popular in more temperate areas of the country.

“The concept sounds fine,” Neal said. “I just don’t know if it would work here in central Maine.”

Both Rainbow’s End and Cedar Brook plan to offer winter burials.

Many funeral homes, including Neal’s, typically refuse to offer public viewings of unembalmed bodies. So Klara Tammany of Auburn has co-founded a group, called Last Things: Alternatives at the End of Life, to help people care for the body of a loved one themselves.

Tammany did just that for her mother. Per her mother’s wishes, Tammany and other family members washed, dressed and displayed the body in her home for two days before taking her to the crematory.

The experience changed Tammany and convinced her to help others.

“Not everybody can do it, so I’m not one to say we shouldn’t have funeral homes,” Tammany said. “But for those who want to do it, we have to make sure that there is an option and they have a choice.”

‘Helped us enormously’

Back at Rainbow’s End, the snow-covered hilltop where Day Bywater was buried in December is now lush green. Small blue flowers, planted by neighbors, were blooming on top of Day’s grave one sunny May afternoon.

Arielle Bywater acknowledges that her family’s decisions were unconventional. Bywater, with the support of her husband, chose to continue with a natural home birth even after learning her son had died in utero.

The birth took place in Belfast with the help of midwives, as planned. The couple could never have anticipated while making those plans months earlier that they also would be arranging a funeral in Maine.

Day was buried at noon on the shortest day of the year, surrounded by the Bywaters and several Rainbow’s End board members and neighbors who helped with preparations.

In a letter to Hills thanking her and the others for their kindness and support, Bywater wrote that the entire experience – from the natural home birth to the green burial – just “felt right.”

“We really do feel blessed to have gone through this experience in this way; we feel it has helped us enormously,” she wrote.

kmiller@bangordailynews.net

990-8250