The story of Vermont Forest Cemetery.
In 2015, the state of Vermont passed a law legalizing natural burial grounds. However, it still required a minimum burial depth of five feet, which means the law hadn’t actually made it possible for the best practices of natural burial to be used. Our founder, Michelle Acciavatti, along with Jennifer Whitman and other natural burial advocates, took on the challenge of amending the burial depth law. Working with experts in natural burial, soil science, geology, wildlife biology, and septic design, she wrote a bill to amend the burial depth to 3.5 feet. She spent several weeks discussing the bill with legislators and traveled throughout the state to listen to people’s concerns and provide education. The bill passed unanimously and became Vermont state law in 2017.
In natural burial, we dig no deeper than four feet so that the body and its bacteria can remain in contact with the active layers of the soil, where oxygen, moisture, warmth, and soil bacteria aid in recycling the body’s elements. The miraculous mycorrhizal network, made up of fungi in a mutually-supportive relationship with the roots of growing things, absorbs, filters, and transports these elements as nutrients for the forest. In natural burial, the body is not just figuratively, but also literally returned to the Earth.
The body is bathed, often by loved ones, and kept cool until the time of interment, but there’s no embalming or other preservation. The body is placed in a biodegradable container made of natural materials—like a pine coffin, a willow basket, or a linen shroud—and lowered gently to rest on pine boughs, leaves, and other green matter. It’s in this way that burial helps sequester carbon rather than adding more to the atmosphere. The land itself is managed with ecologically sound principles in accordance with best practices for conservation burial as defined by the Green Burial Council, the Conservation Burial Alliance, and our own research.
Founder and Head Cemeterian
Michelle Hogle Acciavatti, M.Sci., is a deathworker, a storyteller and a mother. She has trained as a funeral director, an advance care planner, a death doula & educator, a home funeral and pregnancy loss guide, a natural burial advocate & educator, a master naturalist, a writer, a neuroscientist, and an ethicist. In 2016, she created Green Mountain Funeral Alternatives to help people preparing for the end of life, designing funeral services, caring for their own dead, and exploring natural burial options. In 2023, she founded Vermont Forest Cemetery, the first natural burial ground in the state. She is a founding member of The Collective for Radical Death Studies and board member emeritus of the National Home Funeral Alliance.
As a deathworker, Michelle believes that traditional ways of caring for our our dead and natural burial are acts of love and service that can help mourners through their grief experiences, reconnect human and natural communities, and redefine the way we approach not only deathcare but also environmental conservation.
Michelle has practiced death work with people of all ages, including death during pregnancy. Her work has found her in settings as varied as the forest, Boston Children’s Hospital, The Vermont State House, people’s own living rooms as well as the traditional funeral home. She is the co-author of The National Home Funeral Alliance’s The Home Funeral Guidebook and “When Life is Short,” a guidebook for infant and child deathcare coauthored with Toula Sarotis. Her work at Vermont Forest Cemetery centers on restoring hands-on deathcare traditions and preserving the stories of the people buried there, as well as understanding the impact of natural burial from the soil to the
canopy and stewarding the forest through a changing climate.
michelle@memorial.eco
(802) 234-1747
Board of Directors
Treasurer & Cemeterian
Bailey McLaughlin
Bailey McLaughlin weaves life and death together with care and intention. She is dedicated to supporting families through meaningful, nature-centered end-of-life experiences. As a cemeterian, she manages the behind-the-scenes operations that keep Vermont Forest Cemetery thriving! You can find her coordinating and leading burials, creating content for our social media pages, running our fundraisers and more! In addition to death work, she is a Cooperator with Vermont Coverts Woodlands for Wildlife and serves on their executive board as Secretary. Bailey is also a member of Vermont Old Cemetery Association (VOCA) and serves as their webmaster.
President & Outreach Coordinator
James M. Hogle, Ph.D.
Jim is the Edward S. Harkness Professor emeritus at Harvard University, former chair of the Harvard Biophysics program, faculty dean of Dudley House, and resident faculty director of the Graduate Student Commons. He has always had an affinity for nature—especially flyfishing—and bought his home in Vermont in 2006. Jim and his wife, Doreen, have lived in Vermont full-time since he retired in 2019. As Michelle’s father, he has watched as she developed a career in end-of-life care, home funerals, and natural burials and felt the passion and compassion she brings to the idea and practice and that ultimately led to the Founding of Vermont Forest Cemetery. It is impossible to have these experiences without seeing the logic and beauty of natural burials and the beauty and serenity of the cemetery itself. You can contact Jim at info@cemetery.eco if you have any questions about the Vermont Forest Cemetery.
Vice President & Sexton
Paul Acciavatti
Paul is an educator, an author, a former wireless systems engineer, and currently the sexton (or cemetery manager) of Vermont Forest Cemetery. Paul is coming to deathcare work unexpectedly after participating in home funerals and natural burial ceremonies, and seeing the power and impact they have on the mourner. Paul has a deep and humbling love of this land and by the idea of the generations upon generations who will find solace here.
Director
Tamara Warschinski, Ph.D.
Tamara, originally from Germany, holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Adelaide, with a focus on attitudes towards death and dying. She also has extensive experience in nonprofit development, event planning, and fundraising, having worked as a consultant for JAM and as administrator and director of development at JAG Productions. Tamara co-founded The Collective for Radical Death Studies, a nonprofit that educates on end-of-life issues for marginalized communities. She currently works at Kimball Union Academy and lives in Lebanon with her family, enjoying nature, the arts, and lazy Sunday mornings.
Director
Meg Lucas
Meg's background is in the fine arts, having studied at Parsons School of Design and the New School for Social Research, and having worked as an exhibiting artist in San Francisco for 20 years. After relocating to Vermont, she was the founder and co-publisher of Vermont’s Local Banquet, a quarterly magazine which existed for 10 years, and focused on local food and sustainable farming. An avowed activist, Meg has helped work on food issues at the Vermont Statehouse. Meg was drawn to green burial solely for environmental reasons, as she sees it as a wholistic method for returning our bodies to the land; a recycling of nutrients. What she didn’t anticipate was the profound personal growth that she has experienced as she has welcomed the idea of caring for her loved one’s body after death.
Director
Jim Holman
After three decades working within the stewardship of rural cemeteries, Jim continues to work instrumentally in the revival of natural burial at National Landmark Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA, the first of America’s rural Cemeteries (founded in 1831). As former President of the New England Cemetery Association (2019), Jim has brought regional attention to a growing national movement away from conventional burial. In 2017, Jim met Michelle and Jennifer and became a founding member of Green Burial Vermont. Jim enjoys time in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom skiing, snowshoeing, and hiking with his family as well as in Natick, Massachusetts - at the mall (just kidding).
Director
Andrea Stander
Andrea is “sort of” retired from an extensive career in non-profit management, community organizing, communications, and advocacy and has a great love of forests and anywhere outdoors. Most recently she served as the Executive Director and Policy Consultant for Rural Vermont from 2011 to 2020. Founded in 1985 by Vermont farmers, Rural Vermont is a non-profit focused on advocating for the needs of small family farms and rural food producers. She has also held executive, development, and communications positions with Vermont Conservation Voters, VPIRG, Vermont Arts Council and The Northern Forest Alliance. In 2006, Andrea was the Central Vermont Regional Field Coordinator for Bernie Sanders’ first successful campaign for the US Senate. She has previously served on the Boards of Lost Nation Theater and 350VT. She graduated from and is a member of the founding class of Hampshire College. She completed the Vermont Leadership Institute in 2004. Andrea is a resolute local food consumer/composter, and she looks forward to becoming a resident of Vermont Forest Cemetery when her time here is done.