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Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love

  • Rare Bird Farm 91 Duckett Top Tower Road Hot Springs, NC, 28743 United States (map)

Are you interested in having an environmentally responsible death plan, learning practical ways to prepare for a thoughtful and conscientious transition, and create a community-held connection around death? Join us for an enlightening presentation by some of North Carolina’s leading environmental and death conscious educators.

MALLORY MCDUFF, PhD

Mallory McDuff, PhD, Professor of Environmental Studies at Warren Wilson College and author of 'Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love.'

SARAH LASSWELL of Moss and Thistle Farm

Sarah Lasswell of Moss and Thistle Farm brings a passion for green burials and a deep reverence for nature and ceremony. Lasswell will guide participants in a hands-on experience with casket weaving and share her knowledge in growing willow as well as her experience with The Sophia Center for Life Studies and the art of natural death care.

KATHERINE SAVAGE of Death Seeding Life

Death edu-culturalist, Katherine Savage of Death Seeding Life is a death midwife whose purpose is building a culture in which people live in accordance with the planet’s regenerative cycles. She offers ways and means for people to attune their lives to the universal forces of creation and dissolution, so that death can become their teacher. With skill and care, she guides individuals on their personal journey to open to the wisdom of this teacher, and supports communities in building practices that dignify the dying process and honor the earth that will receive us. Through thoughtfully tending the vision of death as the foundation of our awareness, Katherine plants the seeds for a culture that embodies a way of living harmoniously with the earth that conjured us.

This day offering includes the following;

  • Eco-friendly choices as alternatives to traditional burials including green burials, aquamation, green cemeteries, home funerals, and human composting

  • Information on practical planning for life's end

  • Willow farming and casket weaving presentation

  • Willow casket weaving demonstration

  • Plans, inspiration, and support for building community-centered and community-held death care services

  • Laws, legalities, and rights

  • Book signing by Mallory McDuff

  • Resource tables of NC death support organizations including; The Sophia Center for Life Studies, Center for Conscious Living and Dying, and more.

  • Intimate live music and food for purchase to follow this event