Boxerwood Education Association (BEA) and The Meadow are distinct organizations, but they arose from the same heart. That heart and vision belongs to Hunter Mohring and Karen Bailey (KB). After setting BEA on its own independent path, Hunter and KB in time brought forth another gift for the community: provision of a green burial ground.
The Meadow lies adjacent to Boxerwood and many visitors immerse themselves in its quiet beauty. This particular month it felt so appropriate to recognize our partner’s healing presence among us. Thank you, Hunter, for your first-person reflection below:
The first time I helped lower a body back into Earth, I had a vivid image of slipping a fish back into water. Releasing her back to the environment for which she was designed. Home. Tears slid down my cheeks. Not the tears of sadness, but the tears that come when something is beautiful, deeply true, and right. Tears that come when you are surrounded by mystery just beyond your senses and yet safe.
That was November 19, 2016 in The Meadow, a natural burial ground nestled in the land beyond the Boxerwood ponds and just over the horizon facing the Blue Ridge. Karen (KB) Bailey and I developed The Meadow with its mission to honor and promote natural life cycles, enhance and preserve the land as habitat for native flora and fauna, and model the merits and methods of natural end-of-life processes.
By the way, if you don’t happen to know it, KB & I escorted the Boxerwood Education Association into existence because we love nature and natural processes and we want others to have that same chance to fall in love. One of the most important things Bob Munger [local physician and original Boxerwood owner/gardener] taught us to love was including the death processes in the garden. Leaving dead trees for bugs, birds and butterflies. Letting them rot where they fell to feed the ground and make the soil for on-coming generations.
And one day we learned it was legal and possible to bury a person in the ground with no embalming, no casket, no vault. It was possible to give your body back to Earth in a shape to be used for the next natural thing. Now that was exciting and comforting. Surely there were others who would want it too if they knew they could. You can. I like to think Bob Munger would have approved.
Some day when you want to know more about natural burial or The Meadow, take a walk, visit our website, email or call me. I love walking in and talking about The Meadow with people with similar values. I promise you it won’t be a bother.
Hunter Mohring
The Meadow
(540-460-4180)
themeadowlexva@gmail.com
VISIT THE MEADOW WEBSITE