Canyon home where he often slept. He was 27 years old. An autopsy identified his manner and cause of death as accidental acute barbiturate intoxication. Although his death is sometimes reported as a suicide, this is not clearly established as he left no note, and there were four pills left in his pants found next to his body. Wilson's death came fourteen months after the death of Brian Jones, just two weeks before the death of Jimi Hendrix, four weeks before the death of Janis Joplin, and ten months before the death of Jim Morrison, four artists who also died at the same age. Wilson was cremated, and on September 13, 1970 a memorial service was held at Menotomy Rocks Park in his hometown of Arlington. The service was led by Reverend Wilbur Canaday who said, "We are using the sky as a roof, and the ground as a floor, because he himself used nature’s great wonders as his home.” Wilson's ashes were later scattered in Sequoia National Park amongst the redwoods he deeply loved. Conservationism Wilson was a passionate conservationist who loved reading books on botany and ecology. He often slept outdoors to be closer to nature, and amassed a large collection of pinecones. Wilson communicated with trees and plants better than he did with people. He believed that trees were sentient beings that could experience pain. In 1969, he wrote and recorded a song, "Poor Moon", which expressed concern over potential pollution of the moon. His clothes were often dirty and disheveled from collecting leaf and soil samples outdoors. For this reason, Wilson avoided arrest in a drug sting in 1967, when authorities raided Canned Heat's hotel room. In 1970 Wilson established a conservation fund called Music Mountain Foundation in the Skunk Cabbage Creek area of California to purchase a grove to be added to Redwood National Park. The purpose of this organization was to raise money for the preservation of the coastal redwood, which Wilson saw increasingly endangered by pollution, and urban sprawl. Canned Heat along with their manager agreed to donate proceeds from major concerts after Wilson's death, however the donations were later misappropriated. He wrote an essay called 'Grim Harvest', expressing his concern for the logging of redwoods, which was printed as the liner notes to the Future Blues. It begins, "The redwoods of California are the tallest living things on Earth, nearly the oldest,