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 mountain landscape and coast from the ridgetop prairie and oak 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.