Walking along a gently used path, family members gather on the forest-covered hillside just as the sun breaks through the fog. Downhill, it will be a couple of hours before the grey mists disperse, exposing a sweeping view of the ocean and shoreline from the ridgetop redwood groves. The walk to the family grove always brought the conversations to a halt, for a moment.

The memorial sites on the hillside in northwest Humboldt County all have in common what they lack: no headstones or above-ground monuments, no crypts or vaults, no toxic embalming fluids. Bodies are buried in simple caskets or shrouds, meant to decompose, or added to the earth as cremated remains. Family groves are available, ranging from planting a small redwood grove yourself, to adopting an existing second-growth or old-growth grove, or being buried under a fruit tree in an orchard. A 70-acre meadow in a basin facing the ocean provides a grassland alternative.