Deathstead

With only about three decades of life remaining for me (unless some life-extending biobreakthrough is discovered and developed to marketable state before the end), it seems prudent to begin planning for my demise sooner than later. Now is as good a time as any. The trick is to predict what I'll be capable of engineering before breathing my final breath. I do have a clear vision of the particular environment in which to establish the Deathstead.

A high mountain valley wilderness much like the location the homestead destroyed by fire was situated in. That will take time to find and acquire. In the meantime, planning the dwelling and its systems can proceed unhindered by anything except my imagination. Predicting technological advances prior to procurement date is tricky, too. Off-grid tech advances have been strong and steady since jumping into the fray of that lifestyle twenty-five years ago. Today's off-grid systems don't look much different on the surface than back then. But maybe their shape will be more aesthetically pleasing a decade or two from now. Less angular. More curvy. That aside, I do want a less angular home/studio to live and play in until I expire. Maybe something lowslung, clad in stone and tile-shingled with lots of big windows.

But then again, something more compact is all I need for the final years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds of this lifespan. Something less palatial and more cozy with a studio room, kitchen alcove, and bathroom arranged around a central, multi-hearth fireplace.

After all, by then I won't be hosting any large gatherings, if any at all, existing in complete solitude throughout the seasons, preserving the purity of the ultimate purpose and goal of it.

Simple enough for an aging being to manage easily throughout final seasons yet to unfold.

Foremost, preserving serenity of it all for the final moment when my body ceases functioning, giving up its energy and biomass to the place via natural processes of recycling.

The Deathstead then going dormant after most all of me has been absorbed into the environment, possibly awaiting the next person seeking natural transition from a living state.

For the next person comfortable enough with reality, and with themself, to allow the process.

A much better process than grotesquely embalming and entombing pickled remains inside a hermetically-sealed container of fanciful design and polish to keep worms, insects and microbes from cleaning up as they have evolved for eons to do so well to great benefit of all.

Thus, this steward of Earth concludes efforts not with a defiance of nature, but a final, humble integration back into it. To choose natural decomposition is to honor the biological contract we have all been born into. Rather than arresting the inevitable through the chemical violence of embalming and the cold isolation of manufactured caskets, natural decomposition allows the body to surrender its nutrients back to the soil and essences to air.

This process transforms a legacy of societally-forced waste into a gift of renewal. Freed from hermetic seals, our elements nourish the microbes, flora, and fungi that sustain the very landscape we once walked. It is a profound, poetic recycling—a quiet return to the peak-seasonal vibrances of the meadow, ensuring that life persists through our graceful departure. There is no finer transition from life I can imagine, happening in as fine a place imaginable.

Of course, there's always the possibility of catastrophic natural processes wiping away all traces of the Deathstead. Okay by me, as long as it doesn't happen before I'm finished here.