Kenyon College's Green Cemetery Opening Ceremony Oct. 8, 2015

The new sign for the Kokosing Nature Preserve.  Kenyon alumnus Steven Christie did the stonework for this sign.  (Photo by Don Comis)

 After a dedication ceremony, visitors start a tour of the Kokosing Nature Preserve.  The stone pillars, built by Steven Christie, pay homage to the historic stone pillars that form the gateway to Old Kenyon.  (Photo by Don Comis)

On October 8, Kenyon College had a dedication service at its Kokosing Nature Preserve to mark the official opening of a combined public park and green cemetery.  More than 100 people attended the event, with most of the 110 seats under a canopy filled and a good crowd standing nearby.  Attendees included representatives of two funeral homes.

The  Flowers-Snyder Funeral Home in nearby Mount Vernon, Ohio, has earned the highest level of green cemetery certification.

Philander Chase Corporation Project Coordinator Amy Henricksen, speaking at the ceremony, invited everyone to enjoy the park, as a good place to walk and engage in quiet contemplation.  She said Kenyon has planted many native trees on the 24-acre site as well as shortgrass prairie and wildflowers.  She expressed delight that the wildflowers were still blooming on the day of the dedication.

Guests of honor at the ceremony included the chairman of the Philander Chase Corporation, which bought the land for the preserve, the site of the former Tomahawk Gulf Club;  Kenyon College President Sean Decatur;  and Steven Christie, the Kenyon alumnus who did all the stonework for the cemetery’s entrance and sign.

Guests of honor included (left to right) master stone mason Steven Christie, Kenyon College President Sean Decatur, and Rabbi Marc Bragin.  (Photo by Don Comis)
  

The chairman of the Philander Chase Corporation praised another advisor who could not attend the ceremony, Guy Denny, who created about 20 acres of prairie in Fredericktown, Ohio.  He called Denny the top land conservationist in Ohio.

In keeping with the preserve’s sacred space, Kenyon’s religious advisor, Rabbi Marc Bragin, gave a blessing for those currently buried in the preserve and those that will be in the future.  There are currently two people buried there, both friends of Lisa Schott, managing director of the Philander Chase Corporation.

Also an original poem was read and Kenyon singers performed for the ceremony.

About 2400 grave plots are available, both in wooded areas overlooking two ponds and in the prairie section.  The graves in the prairies will become part of the prairie, since the only mowing that will be done is to create temporary paths to the graves for services and to maintain the permanent paths in the preserve.  Grave markers must protrude no more than three inches from the ground and must look like natural rock, although they can be engraved with names and dates.

The prairie will be maintained by annual controlled burning that creates only enough heat to burn off surface vegetation to prevent woody plants from taking over the prairie grasses.

There is an option to bury bodies or ashes in the plots, as well as a low cost option of simply spreading ashes on a surface of the preserve.  All burial and ash spreading sites are located by GPS coordinates and recorded in cemetery records. Most plots can be reached by the permanently maintained paths.

There is an area cleared to form an amphitheater for possible performances by Kenyon dance or drama students.

Burial in Company of Friends

Lisa Schott by the fresh grave of  her friend's husband.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Lisa Schott (far left) and Amy Henricksen (fourth from left) lead tour of Kokosing Nature Preserve.  The grave is that of  Schott's friend, the first burial at the new green cemetery.  (Photo by Don Comis) 

Schott said that one thing that took her and Henricksen by surprise was that some of their friends and acquaintances would be buried here.  Schott faced that since a good friend of hers is buried here and a friend’s husband was buried here on September 19.  Schott herself plans to be buried here as does a friend of mine who really likes the idea of being buried in a nature preserve.

That’s something my wife, Helen, and I find tempting  too—not only being buried in a beautiful spot that is tied to my life, among friends, but also in a space legally preserved forever, with development and cemetery relocation forbidden, and the payment going for upkeep of the preserve and funding more land preservation by the Philander Chase Corporation.

Zoe Case was one of many who sowed prairie seeds courtesy of Kenyon's environmental group called the "Land Lords", a play on Kenyon's "Lords" athletic teams.  (Photo by Don Comis)

After the ceremony, all were invited to grab a big handful of prairie seeds and spared them on nearby land with a prepared seedbed.

The final event was a walking tour of the cemetery, where there was a moving moment as Schott stood by the fresh grave of her friend’s husband.              

Green Cemetery Part of Kenyon College's Land Preservation

Nature’s Cycle of Death and Renewal [Reprint of my Apple Valley Cider Press Article, July 2015 Issue]

Lisa Schott (left) and Kris Kennard Caldwell at a 2015 Reunion  tour of Kenyon College's new green cemetery.  (Photo by Don Comis)

First burial at Kenyon College's Kokosing Nature Preserve.  Only shallow natural stone grave markers are allowed.  The first marker can be seen in right foreground.  (Photo by Don Comis) 

June 6 [2015] at Kenyon College was a day of joy amidst death.  When I arrived at the Brown Family Environmental Center that day, I was surprised to see two fire trucks, one with a raised ladder. 

As I escorted my friends and their children and grandchildren, 18 of us by a quick count, to the Center’s ponds for Family Adventure Day, I could see a memorial service close by.  Then I saw a flag raised on the fire truck’s raised ladder and I remembered reading in the Mount Vernon News that there would be a memorial service at the Brown Center for a veteran born in Ohio, with parents in Gambier.

I was very aware that June 6 would also be the day of the first burial at Kenyon’s “green cemetery” on the grounds of the former Tomahawk Golf Course, at 10620 Quarry Chapel Road, one and a half miles northeast of Kenyon.  I had learned that in late May when I took a bus tour of sites Kenyon’s Philander Chase Corporation has preserved, one of the events at my 45^th class reunion.  The Corporation is Kenyon’s nonprofit land trust, created in 2000.

Development Eats up 7-9 Acres an Hour

The Chase land trust formation in 2000 was spurred partly by plans for a recreational-vehicle park along the Kokosing River, right at the base of Kenyon’s “Hill”.  Worried about inappropriate development near the college, amidst statewide development of 7 to 9 acres an hour, the college set up the trust to fund conservation and agricultural easements as well as outright land purchases in the college’s vicinity, if deemed essential. The Corporation matches state funding and provides expertise to farmers considering granting easements. 

Kenyon bought the site of the planned RV park.  For several years after that, the College set about buying land that was “strategically contiguous” to the first purchase, including the 480 acres that became the Brown Family Environmental Center preserve, which helps keep the Kokosing River pristine.   To date the college owns 1,200 acres, while helping fund easements on more than 3,800 additional acres.  And the Owl Creek Conservancy, a sister trust to the Chase trust, has preserved nearly 2,422 additional acres in the Knox County area.

Kokosing Nature Preserve Has First Burial

Lisa Schott, a 1980 Kenyon graduate who is managing director of the Philander Chase Corporation, explained that they bought the 51-acre golf course when it closed and no buyers were forthcoming.  They reduced the golf course to 9 holes on 27 acres and leased out that business and created a nature preserve and green cemetery on the rest of the land, called the “Kokosing Nature Preserve.” 

Schott explained that a green cemetery requires burials to use only biodegradable materials, with no concrete vaults or embalming of bodies.  This allows people to be buried in just a shroud if they wish or in a coffin made of wood, wicker, bamboo, cardboard, or any material that will degrade in the soil.  Wood used for the coffin can’t be treated wood.  Ashes can be buried as well.

In a fact sheet handed out on the tour I read that, “Natural burial is the way most people have been buried throughout the ages.  The use of concrete vaults and embalming are relatively new concepts, becoming popular in the United States during the Civil War.  Natural burial is a re-emerging movement nationally and worldwide.  The nation’s first conservation burial ground, Ramsey Creek Preserve in South Carolina, opened in 1998.  Forty-two [now 47] cemeteries are approved by the Green Burial Council across the United States.  The national burial movement…offers a traditional, environmentally sound alternative [to conventional burials]…the Green Burial Council [is] an independent not-for-profit organization that has established eco-certification standards for natural burial grounds.”

The cemetery is on 24 acres of restored prairies and woodlands, with the first burial being in a newly planted dogwood grove on a hill between ponds and woods, east of the cemetery’s entrance.  Each plot can accommodate one body and two people’s ashes or just the ashes of four people.  The June 6 burial was of ashes of one person.  There is room for about 2,300 plots, each measuring 10- by 15-feet.

The plots cost $5,000 each--$2,500 as a gift to the Philander Chase Corporation and $2,500 for the actual plot.  The money helps the Chase trust fund the purchase of easements on —or to buy—land to protect the area surrounding Kenyon and retain the pastoral beauty that gives Gambier and Knox County its character and environmental soundness.  As Schott said, “it’s good for everyone’s health and well-being.”

Kenyon is the first college or university to combine a green cemetery with land conservation.  Until the purchase of the Tomahawk Golf Course, the trust was funded only by donations from alumni and others. Schott noted the irony of one alumni donor who added as a restriction on how the donation could be used that it not be used by the college itself for development!

Ashes can also be scattered in designated areas throughout the nature preserve—wooded areas, prairie, ponds or wet meadows.  The price will be “significantly less than purchasing interment rights for a burial plot,” according to Amy Henricksen, project coordinator for the Philander Chase Corporation and steward of the Kokosing Nature Preserve.  The price will cover the cost of GPS locating and maintaining a permanent record of the scattering. 

This is the first green cemetery in central Ohio.  When approved by the Green Burial Council, it will be the fifth such approved cemetery statewide.  Plus, since the creation of the Kokosing cemetery, Knox County’s first Jewish green cemetery opened as an expansion of the College Township Cemetery near Quarry Chapel, Schott said.  Jewish cemeteries have always been green cemeteries. 

There are 50 Green Burial Council-approved cemeteries in North America to date, plus 206 approved funeral homes.  This includes the Flowers-Snyder Funeral Home in Mt. Vernon.  Henricksen said that the Schoedinger Funeral Homes in Columbus are also an approved provider “and they have expressed interest in having us meet with their directors/staff when we are operational as well.”

Henricksen added that both the Dowd-Snyder and Lasater Funeral Homes in Mt. Vernon “have agreed to share information about [the] Kokosing Nature Preserve with families who are interested in green burial.”

The Kokosing Nature Preserve is open to everyone as a park and cemetery, although it is not fully operational yet, with no signage and final landscaping, pillar stonework, and other work underway.  Henricksen said, “our plan is to be fully marketing/selling plots by the end of the summer.”

Schott said that participants in the first burial had a picnic in the park after the burial, complete with a bluegrass band, to celebrate the life of their loved one.

 

She said many people are signing up for plots from all over the country, not just people related to Kenyon.

Stephen Christie, a 1971 Kenyon graduate, is the landscape architect for the preserve.  He supervised the planting of the oak and maple trees that line the cemetery’s entrance and the dogwood grove. David Kridler, a 1975 Kenyon graduate, is the master stone mason doing the stonework for the pillars at the cemetery’s entrance and the cemetery sign.

The pillars are a nod to the old stone center pole at the gateway of the “Middle Path” that goes straight through the historic part of Kenyon, a pole I’ve remembered fondly ever since the ‘60s, when I passed it daily on the way to classes. 

As I walked around the Kokosing Nature Preserve ponds during the reunion tour, I heard more green frogs give their human-like scream and plop into the water than ever before.  I was also thrilled to watch a large snapping turtle amble from one pond to another while a great blue heron stood nearby.

Hendricksen said, “There are about 70 burial plots in the newly planted dogwood grove.” About another 150 plots will be in the existing woods.  “The majority of the plots will be in the open spaces that have been planted to prairie grasses and wildflowers,” she said.

Kenyon Farm Safe for Posterity

Besides the green cemetery, Schott showed us many other acres protected by the Corporation, including the 11-acre Kenyon Farm on Route 308, on the way to Kenyon from Route 36.  Kenyon bought that farm in 2012. 

An article in the Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin in 2012 said that while the trust normally limits itself to a radius of about five miles around Kenyon, it made an exception when it helped the County create Wolf Run Regional Park.  The pace of purchasing easements has quickened since 2010, from 15 to more than 30, according to the article.

The article quoted Schott as saying, “I think the College is wise…You want to protect your view corridors, and you want to protect your water. The Kokosing River is dear, and not only for the beauty's sake. We want this buffer.” 

On our recent alumni tour, Schott said that Kenyon wants to be sure that students see farmland when they look out the windows of their dining hall—and that people driving in the area see Kenyon’s historic buildings as a backdrop to a bucolic landscape. 

On our bus ride, she pointed out the sight of the stone tower rising from historic Peirce Hall, which houses the student dining area, overlooking farmland and farmhouses and barns.

Schott said neither she nor the Chase trust is anti-development, but support only careful development that is right for an area.

The Next Generation of Wildlife

At the Brown Center on June 6, the children caught tadpoles in several stages of development as well as one small frog and a baby painted turtle.  So we know the amphibians have mated.  On an earlier walk at the Center, during another reunion activity, we heard baby pileated woodpeckers crying for food and watched one of the parents conduct a frantic search for food before nightfall, while talking to itself!

Later, while driving on AV Drive on June 8 to check out AV resident Debbie Minard’s hostas, we stopped as a doe crossed the road and then saw her tiny fawn with enough sense to delay crossing until assured we were stopped and then joined her watchful mother.  That was the youngest fawn I’ve seen.

Minard told me she had seen a red-bellied woodpecker couple taking food from her feeder to three youngsters perched on a branch above the feeder.  This proved to me that Minard is right about the importance of feeding birds in summer—this is when they teach youngsters how to recognize bird feeders.

I also learned recently that the purple, white and pink flowers that brightened roadsides and woods for several weeks this spring were Dame’s rocket, not the phlox I thought they were. Dame’s rocket was an old garden favorite in England years ago.  People planted it in American gardens and it escaped.  Since it’s so plentiful around Memorial Day, this is the flower I think should be planted on veterans’ graves, replacing the daffodils my 95-year-old mother-in-law recalls placing on Civil War graves on what used to be called Decoration Day.

Nature’s cycle of life and death continues.

Note:  Check out my website (www.doncomis.simplesite.com) and blog (www.donaldcomis.blogspot.com) for more photos and stories.  For example, by searching for my “Visiting Guy Denny's Ohio Prairie” blog of July 27, 2014, you can read about my experience last year at an event that will be repeated this July 26, with a link to the Owl Creek Conservancy’s website list of this and other upcoming events in the 14th annual “Explore the Nature of Knox County” 2015 series.

Anyone with comments or suggestions is welcome to send me an e-mail at doncomis@centurylink.net or post comments on my website or blog.

August 17 Last Chance for New Knox County Naturalist Program

Lori Totman, director of the Knox County Parks District,  shows a photo of flowering bloodroot in one of the field guides she recommends, the National Wildlife Federation's "Field Guide to Wildflowers of North America" by David M. Brandenburg.  She mentioned she knew Brandenburg but was too modest to mention that she is mentioned in the book's acknowledgements for her help when she worked at the Dawes Arboretum, where Brandenburg is a botanist. 

August 17 Last Chance for New Knox County Naturalist Program

Knox  County’s chance to have its first Ohio Certified Naturalist Program, like Licking County’s, is endangered as the deadline for getting at least 15 applicants approaches:  August 17.

As of August 3, I was only the 8^th applicant.  The program is a great chance to learn about Nature and then share it with others so more and more people become environmental stewards. 

Our Backyards Are Frontiers of Ecology

The backyards and countryside and parks of counties like ours are the real frontiers of ecology, the places where we can make a difference in the survival of wildlife, from monarch butterflies that winter in Mexico to polar bears in the Arctic, where ice is melting because of practices in our country.

To become a certified naturalist, we need to complete 40 hours of classroom and field instruction between August 25 and September 29.  Then we need to perform 40 hours of volunteer service that can range from leading tours to monitoring bluebird houses to logging computer data, depending on individual interests.

Interested persons should call 740-397-0401 or e-mail Sabrina Schirtzinger at schirtzinger.55@osu.edu.

For more information, read the article “Deadline approaching for naturalist program”, (page A-6 , August 10, Mount Vernon News.

Schirtzinger, Knox County Ohio State University Extension Educator for Agriculture and Natural Resources, is organizing the program.  One of the program's many instructors is Knox County Parks Division director.  She got her start as a professional naturalist and served as a Volunteer Naturalist in Licking County.  She also worked at the Dawes Arboretum.  Her colleague at Dawes, David Brandenburg, is another instructor in the program.  He wrote the National Wildlife Federation's "Field Guide to Wildflowers of North America."

The program is patterned after the Master Gardener program. 

As one example of the countless projects participants can engage in, Totman cited expanding and maintaining Wolf Run Park’s small trail of 12 bluebird houses, adding maybe 12 more near Upper Gilchrest and Yauger Roads.  Or, she said, we could build bluebird trails in Honey Run Highlands Park.

Proving that the possibilities of service projects are endless, organizations involved with the program, in addition to the Knox County Park Division and Extension, include the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Wildlife.

Another possibility is education and outreach work with Schirtzinger, working with adults or children.  Totman said that they would “play on the strengths of the volunteers.”  

Examples also include leading bird walks, removing non-native plants, creating National Wildlife Federation certified wildlife habitat in our backyards, planting milkweed for Monarch butterflies, and counting birds at park feeders for Project FeederWatch.  For those who don’t want to get down and dirty, there is office work such as data entry.  My Cider Press articles might qualify, as might my wildlife gardens, my moth counting, and the school tours of the Brown Center I’ve volunteered for.

Totman said there is a need for long-term collection of data on populations of all species of wildlife—“insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, mollusks, etc.”--on the County’s approximate 1,150 acres of parkland, to spot trends.  I know that parks consultant Gary Moore told me long ago that data like my moth counts are valuable in documenting the biodiversity value of parkland.

The training topics include Watersheds & Aquatic Life, Plants, Geology, Herpetology, Ornithology, and Mammals.

To get a taste of what you might learn by becoming a volunteer, check out the following article I wrote for the June 2015 issue of the Apple Valley Cider Press.  The story is about two tours I covered, one by Totman and one by Heather Doherty of the Brown Family Enviornmental Center.  Both are instructors in the naturalist program that will only begin if more people enroll!

Heather Doherty, program manager for the Brown Family Environmental Center, shows plants to children at a wildflower hike.   (Photo by Don Comis)

May’s Fertility 

Well into a wildflower hike in the shaded woods of Honey Run Falls near Millwood on May 9, Lori Totman, Knox County Park District Director, revealed her secret motivation for the hike:  To show us the valued native spring ephemeral woodland flowers to inspire us to help her remove the non-native plants that threaten these treasures.

“We want you to know what’s here, what we can lose to non-native invasive plants,” she said.

Saving Honey Run Falls’ Treasures

She mentioned this when she reached one of the major offenders, garlic mustard plants, after we passed native spring beauties, blue violets, Dutchman’s breeches, squirrel corn, bloodroot, Mayapples, wild blue phlox, wild ginger, kidney leaf buttercup, butterweed, white trillium, hepatica, and true Solomon’s seal.

Then we reached a clump of garlic mustard, at which point Totman offered us a free pass for removing the invasive pest along any public trail in the county parks.  Some of the dozen who came for the walk dutifully pulled clumps of mustard and carried them off.

The Knox County Park District website (http://www.knoxcountyparks.org) asks anyone interested in pulling invasive plants or helping in other ways to send an email to info@knoxcountypark.org, or call (740) 392-7275.

Later we saw Jacob’s ladder, jewelweed, false Solomon’s seal, and other wildflowers.

Totman taught me that most of these native woodland flowers are early bloomers because they have to be done flowering before the forest leaf canopy fills in and shades them out.

Wildflowers We Can Eat

We started seeing native wildflowers right in the parking lot at the beginning of the walk— pink spring beauties and blue violets.  A common theme with many wildflowers emerged right then when Totman mentioned both are edible.  Native Americans ate the tubers of spring beauties and the flowers and leaves of blue violets can be eaten too.  The blue violet leaves and flowers can be used in salad.  The leaves can be eaten raw or sautéed like spinach.  The flowers add a peppery taste to salads.  “Or dip the flowers in sugar for cake decorations,” Totman added.  Also the flowers can be brewed as a tea that will be “more blue than purple”, she said.

Sautéing came up in discussions of other wildflowers as well.

Obviously, we aren’t allowed to remove more than a taste when we find them on parkland, unlike the garlic mustard.

We must avoid Mayapple plants because every part of them is poisonous, except the “apples” they produce in August.  But you have to beat wildlife to the punch to get any.

I could see why these flowers are called “ephemeral”—many of the flowers were gone by the day of our hike, including the flowers of bloodroot and hepatica, which blooms in mid-March.  And the flowers of Dutchman’s breeches were on their way out.

It reminded me of how quickly things can change in May, like the blossoms on my crabapple tree disappearing so quickly, probably sped up by the mini-heat wave in early May.  A friend told me he saw the same thing with his apple trees, the blossoms not surviving long enough to attract a lot of bees as they did last year.

Love Along the Kokosing

By the time we reached the end of the hike, at a sandy beach along the Kokosing River, we had seen about 30 different species of native wildflowers.  The beautiful scene by the river, with huge boulders and two boats, was a fitting climax to a walk through shaded woodlands with colorful flowers and beautiful rock formations and cliffs and a gorgeous waterfall cooling off children and picnickers, including the Amish.  We even got to see a man propose to his girlfriend on a large boulder overlooking the river!

The preview of summer had packed the park, at least the falls, and filled the park’s two parking lots.

For wildlife, we saw an American toad, heard a frog plop into water, and heard gray tree frogs and two migrating birds—an Acadian flycatcher and a yellow warbler.

Celebrating Spring’s Fertility Rites at Kenyon

On a May 2 wildflower hike at the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College, Program Manager Heather Doherty said that she heard her first tree frogs that day.  Now, they’ve replaced spring peepers as serenades outside my bedroom/office window. 

I celebrated spring May 2 on the Brown Center’s 1.5 mile Fern Trail.  That hike was not capped by any marriage proposals, but it did end with an outside dance performance by Kenyon students, which I saw as a celebration of the Center’s woods and fields.

During the hike, we saw some flowers not seen at Honey Run, such as a trillium that Doherty accurately called “smelly” and “ugly”, planted in a garden near the beginning of the walk.  Doherty explained that the trillium’s smell is designed to attract flies to pollinate the plant.  We also saw flowering bluebells, speedwell (one of the first to flower in spring), dead nettle, and bedstraw.

Doherty reminded us that we can tell that dead nettle is in the mint family because of its square stem.  I recognized the purplish flowering plant as a common weed in my garden and widespread in a farm field I drove by since the walk.

We also saw mustard plants (bittercress) which explode when touched, sending out seeds.  I recognize them in my garden too, and they may have been the plants that coated my shirt with pollen after I walked through them.

The star of the Kenyon walk for me was Grant Metcalf, 4.  First of all he wore the kind of outfit I’d like to live in—cargo pants and a cargo vest, with an official looking “Metro Parks Columbus” patch.  (Of course, my patch would read “Knox County Parks”.) Second, there wasn’t an edible plant he didn’t eat on the walk, including dead nettle, violets, and chickweed.

He particularly liked bedstraw plants because the entire plant sticks to people’s clothes when thrown on them.  And throw them he did.

On our way back to the hike’s starting point, after watching the dance, Doherty opened one of the Center’s many bluebird houses to show us three small pale blue eggs.

From the proposal we witnessed at Honey Run to the bluebird eggs and flowers producing seed, we sure celebrated May’s fertility on those two walks!

Check out my website (www.doncomis.simplesite.com) and blog (www.donaldcomis.blogspot.com) for more photos and stories.  For example, by searching for my “Visiting Guy Denny's Ohio Prairie” blog of July 27, 2014, you can read about my experience last year at an event that was repeated this past July, with a link to the Owl Creek Conservancy’s website list of this and other upcoming events in the 14th annual “Explore the Nature of Knox County” 2015 series.

Note:  Anyone with comments or suggestions is welcome to send me an e-mail at doncomis@centurylink.net or post comments on my website or blog.