Being raised on a small farm in Virginia, the rhythm of life was shaped by the land — the changing light, the soil beneath our hands, the quiet labor of growing things. From an early age, I learned that the Earth gives and receives in equal measure, and that tending to it is both work and worship.

My father, Carl, taught me most of what I know about that balance. He was a man of both enterprise and stewardship — deeply engaged in business, conservation, and permaculture long before most people spoke of such things in the same breath. When I went on to study at the University of Florida, my work with Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery opened a door to something that felt ancient and inevitable: returning to the land in death as we belong to it in life.

I shared the idea of natural burial with my father — how it could be a final act of ecological reciprocity, where each resting place restores soil, nourishes life, and protects wild land for generations to come. He understood immediately.

In 2021, when my father was a week from dying, I asked him where he wanted to go. He simply said,

“Plant me in the prairie.”

It was both a request and a benediction — a wish to be part of the cycle he had always honored. His final vision was to create a natural burial ground, a living landscape of renewal rather than permanence. Terrafinity exists because of that wish.

Every root, every breath of wind across our land, carries his legacy — and the promise that death can return to its rightful place in the circle of life. Through Terrafinity, we continue the work he began: healing the Earth, honoring those we love, and ensuring that what we leave behind sustains what comes next.