It seems to me that rather than absolute restrictions with burial in water or cremation and scatter in water always being bad, its more a matter of degree. A lot of animal life is dying in whether the animal happens to be when it dies, and it typically is not a problem. Scavengers strip and eat the remains, and the elements of the body get re-distributed. This helps keep other creatures alive, helping the diversity. The Mother Ganges is extreme example of that system out of balance. There are way more dead humans than any one location can reasonably expect to handle. Does that mean the occasional body lost on the wild and left to decompose or be eaten by scavengers is bad? I don't think so. Dumping tons of ashes in one spot is not going to help that spot. But scattering a little here, a little there, and the system will absorb the ashes just fine. Just as try to scatter our other impacts on the wilderness, selecting different campsites, not leaving any more impact than we absolutely need to. A few kayaks on the water is fine, creating a continuous solid raft of kayaks could start to be in impact on a section of water, and would be less fun. The viking funeral is an interesting idea. I don't think most kayaks have enough fuel mass for a proper cremation, compared to larger boat with thicker planking. There is/was some culture that disposed of its bodies by building a high tower and letting the vultures feed on the body, because to bury the body was to taint the earth, to burn the body was to taint the air, etc Its always sounded the most resonable to me, though probably wouldn't work with the volume of bodies in a large city... dave -- Dave Uebele (daveu_at_sptddog.com) Spotted Dog Systems http://sptddog.com/daveu.html *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Jul 19 1999 - 09:04:41 PDT
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