My mother told me the following story about a trip my parents made to the birthplace of my step-father:

 …[W]e made it to the homestead.  Sad though, nothing there.  Dad said something about that his whole life has been erased - nothing of any of the homes he's lived in are still around - except the one in LV and our present one.   But we did find some stones and bricks from the fireplace - brought some home, and a handfull of pecans from one of the pecan trees he and his Dad planted many years ago.  It was a beautiful area, peaceful and quiet.  Of course we had to wade the stream and cross the barbed wire fence to get back to the car.  But it was fun.  We had planned to stop in Mesquite for dinner, but our appearance was a little too gross for even Mesquite and so we subsisted on licorace whips and fig newtons.  It was a fun day though.

I've often thought about this, every time I see a plastic bottle in the wilderness... I mean, the plastic bottle will outlast any trace of us by centuries... But we all have this desire for immortality. To do something that will be remembered. The Celts have this hero who asked a Druid what the day was good for. The Druid responded that anyone who would pick up arms today will have a glorious but short life. The kid (as he was 15 or so), picked up a sword, became the greatest hero of Celtic legend, and died a few years later. And this was the model of man for their culture. In fact, after Patrick converted the Irish Celts to Christianity, they were a bit disappointed that they could die a memorable death, i.e. immortality.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this story and had a few almost random thoughts on the subject:

An acquaintence of mine is actually trying to build a house that is so environmentally friendly that when she leaves, the house will return to the soil in a year or so. The goal is to leave no trace.

Ursula LeGuin wrote a story about a sculpter whose culture insisted that all statues should be made out of sand, so that the wind could blow it away. This was supposed to be a gift to Nature, and not to be done out of egotism. In the story, the character is executed after he was discovered to have been making statues out of marble and hiding them in a cave.

Music is kind of that way … or at least, it was for thousands of years before the invention of sound recording … and even before Gregory and his musical notation. Here is a complete gift to God (or a gift to your audience) that is completely transitory. Nothing lives, but in memory. I guess that is why the Celts, with their intense oral tradition, felt that memorials from a bard was the only thing that lasted.

I am also reminded of Native American beliefs (which links well in with Japanese Shintoism) that when a person dies, they live in a world of spirits. But over time, they start to fade away, and it is only when living persons remember or talk about them are they renourished. If the dead are forgotten, they cease to exist. Therefore, the goal of life is to live so memoriably that your descendents remember you often.