Fern Prairie Cemetery

Fern Prairie Cemetery — wrote their choice for district chairman on torn pieces of notebook paper and threw them in a hat.They were tallied up. Will Zalpys won the chairmanship, though his victory was never really in doubt.“We just did the election, and unfortunately I’m it,” Zalpys joked in a deadpan tone.Zalpys has led the cemetery district in the outskirts of Camas since April 2002. The other commissioners laud him as the member with the most knowledge of the cemetery’s workings.Most of the district’s meetings are carried out with a deliberate impassiveness. It’s likely out of necessity, as many topics deal with death. There’s a need for a respectful routine, according to its members.The commissioners are Zalpys, Jeanette Jester and John Straub.Meetings, decisionsAt its January meeting, the group discussed lowering the price of its baby grave plots, designated to a small section of the cemetery marked off with a white picket fence. The baby section is about 1 year old and featured a handful of graves as of mid-March.That meeting took place at East County Fire and Rescue Station 91, just up the road from Fern Prairie, off Northeast Robinson Road.It costs $100 to bury a baby at the rural Clark County cemetery. That price and others are less expensive than options in the Vancouver-Portland area. In recent years, people have been choosing Fern Prairie for its affordability, Zalpys said.Burials can be costly. So can the upkeep of the cemetery. So the commissioners discussed including costs of keeping things neat, particularly around natural gravesites. “Green” caskets, allowed under Washington law, decompose over time. The ground around the plots can shift.“Selling people graves but telling them after a burial that they owe more money is awkward,” Zalpys said.Other topics covered included barring customers from using homemade caskets (people weren’t following the criteria for doing so), vandalism of the cemetery’s portable restroom, and keeping a temporary position open in case commissioner Straub took off to hunt elk.Perhaps the...

Brad McMasters’ mother, Nancy Aguirre, of Vancouver, who died at the age of 67 in October 2010, indicated to him that she wanted a natural burial in Western Washington.“We were fortunate to have my mother on hospice care for a few months, which gave us time to thoughtfully discuss options with her,” McMasters said. “Had it been up to me I would’ve had her cremated and buried in the family plot on my father’s side of the family in Western Idaho.”“It was her own contemplation and research, that she determined she wanted it to be natural,” he added. “It sounded cozy to her, and she thought it seemed better for the environment than a traditional burial.”McMasters said there was not a lot of information about natural burials in 2010. After visiting a dry, rustic, natural burial area that was not easy to get to in Goldendale, Washington, he contacted Chris Dierickx, owner of Straub’s Funeral Home & Columbia River Cremation, in Camas, and Dierickx told McMasters about natural burials at Fern Prairie Cemetery, north of Camas.While realizing that natural burials are better for the environment because they do not involve embalming fluids, McMasters said he plans to be cremated and his urn will share a burial plot with a loved one.Aguirre’s family has planted seasonal flowers on her grave site.McMasters said his mother was buried wrapped in her favorite down comforter.“Because of relatively early admission into hospice care, we were able to thoughtfully discuss end of life options with her,” he said. “Now we have the gift of never second-guessing whether we made the right decisions for her.”Gretel Bohn, the funeral director of Brown’s Funeral Home, in Camas, said a green burial involves a biodegradable covering — such as soft wood, wicker or a cloth shroud — for the body.“Everything returns to the earth over the course of years,” she said.Dierickx said most of the local families that are choosing the “green burial” option are selecting a cloth covered fiberboard casket that is lowered into a grave.William Zalpys, a Clark County Cemete...