There are wind-ablated mesas where death leans as blackened tree, and revenants float like ghosts risen from rocks and set adrift.

"While there are disagreements as to the details of the soul's journey [in Chumash religion]...it is virtually always to the west. It seems reasonable to infer that heads are oriented toward the west during burial because the land of the dead is toward the west and that death in general is associated with the west."W

Walking on the bluffs this afternoon, I looked toward the setting sun, and thought about how Japanese folktales delight in ghost stories, especially those entwined with nature. For example, a young farmer named Heitaro blocks his village from using a willow tree's wood to build a bridge. One day, while he was sitting in the willow's shade, a beautiful woman appeared.

"Night after night they met there." Eventually, Heitaro asked her to marry him.
The couple lived happily, until the Emperor proclaimed that he was going to build a temple and was looking for the best timber. Heitaro's village decided to donate the willow, and this time he couldn't stop them. As the tree was being cut down, his wife screamed, "'They are cutting me! Look how the shadow trembles in the moonlight...
My hair is falling through the sky!'"

The borderline between humanity and the rest of the natural world is the burr, when positioned correctly and stared at, much like a miniature goat head, center mass ugly like a virus or strain of bacteria, its rapier-like spikes jutting approximately where the horns, ears, and a devilish beard-point are the ego's most clever illusion, as it is between life and death.
Among traditional Navaho, if someone dies in a hogan, the structure must be abandoned. So that, whenever possible, the incurably ill are taken outside to die.