The Brundage Wilderness Cemetery in Inland Township has plots one foot square. Each plot can hold the cremains of two persons. Photo by Stewart McFerran.
By Stewart A. McFerran
Editor’s note: When I read in the paper that my favorite teacher had passed, I researched online where I might pay my respects. Instead, I found where one of his family members was buried, in what the Los Angeles Times called “the nation’s first green cemetery” in Benzie County’s Inland Township. Contributing Writer Stewart McFerran was tasked with finding the Brundage Wilderness Cemetery and getting its story.
Wilderness is an illusion. More so now than it once was in northern Michigan. If you had been on a stagecoach ride in 1870 from Manistee to Traverse City, you might have glimpsed wilderness when the coach stopped in the settlement of Brundage, in Benzie County’s Inland Township. It was a bumpy ride before the tracks were laid and train stations built.
On a recent visit to the Brundage Wilderness Cemetery, I got to thinking that many of us had been nursing something like illusions of wilderness here in the “Up North.” But Pere Marquette State Forest lands, between Honor and Interlochen, are a good place to search for wilderness. With the stagecoaches and train stations gone, we have a different kind of wilderness now.
Very little remains of Brundage, the settlement, other than some gravestones on the bluff above where Brundage Creek flows. One can make out where the dam once was and imagine the thirsty stagecoach horses drinking from the creek.
Birth of a cemetery
If you find the cemetery’s parking lot, you will see a flagpole and the new split-rail fence recently installed by Inland Township. Just beyond the fence is the newer part of the one-acre cemetery that was established in 1985 by Arthur Stickles, a cemetery operator from Detroit, his wife Shirley, and their business partners, Garry and Dorothy Pierce. Stickles had surveyors split a portion of the Inland Township Cemetery into a matrix of burial plots, each measuring one square foot. Reduced to cremains, humans can be buried there in urns.
There are 14 sections named after trees, with 150 plots in each section. Metal plates in the ground mark each section’s corners. The partners leased the one-acre site from the township and marketed it as a “wilderness cemetery.”
The cemetery’s quiet forest location appeals to nature lovers. Those who prefer cremation and a “green” burial are drawn to the small, space-saving plots. They may envision their family and friends listening to the wind in the trees and wending their way to a murmuring creek as they pay their respects.
Township Supervisor Paul Beechraft said that the lease on Brundage Wilderness Cemetery was up in 2008, and it reverted to the township. He indicated there are plenty of plots available here for those seeking a wilderness resting place with “eternal care.” It is surrounded by the Pere Marquette State Forest.
Brundage history
As you continue deeper into the cemetery and approach the edge of the bluff, you will see a large and quite old monument marked “Brundage.” This is where the cemetery’s namesake lies. And a very nice spot it is, right on the edge of the woodsy bluff. Below it, in the valley, runs Brundage Creek. There is an old grade that runs from left to right. One can find his or her way down to Brundage Creek on that 150-year-old path.
In 1981, Lyle Brundage gave a list of his forebears buried in Brundage Cemetery to the Inland Township clerk. The earliest burial, according to his list, was in 1874. Fourteen other Brundages were buried here between 1874 and 1909.
The former Brundage settlement was right on the stream where Rance Brundage built the dam that harnessed the flow of Brundage Creek. There was a schoolhouse and a hotel. Rance made money carving up the wilderness and selling the real estate. But the old settlement is gone. Walking through a grove of cedar, you can imagine that you caught a glimpse of wilderness once again.
As I got back into my car, I thought about how entering the unknown alone without support might describe wilderness. Not knowing the way forward in this pandemic is a kind of wilderness, too.
But here, in the outdoor “wilderness,” with social distance and nobody around, the mask can come off and you can wander in the cemetery. You only need to check your GPS to know exactly where you are and feel right at home. You can choose to stay forever and, as Paul Beechcrft said, your plot will have eternal care.
Beyond the fence of the Brundage Wilderness Cemetery, things have changed. Maybe wilderness is not an illusion Up North and in other regions of the United States.
Inland Township Supervisor Paul A. Beechcraft can be reached at the Inland Township Hall at (231) 275-6568 or by email: supervisor@inlandtownship.org.
For more about Brundage Wilderness Cemetery, read OutsideOnline.com, “Dispatches,” in For the Record, May 1997, “How Green Is My … Final Resting Place?” by Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta.
This story is dedicated to “Mr. Catton,” my seventh-grade social studies teacher, whose advocacy in environmental and social justice issues opened the minds of his young students and those who read his letters to the editor in the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Be at peace, James T., wherever you rest. – Pat S., Editor
Stewart A.McFerran lives just five miles north of the Brundage Wilderness Cemetery, within the Pere Marquette State Forest, where he nurses his illusion of wilderness.
