Mine Olde Mind

Yesterday in Soil Science 210 lab (a class I am in right now) we watched DIRT! the movie! It was an awesome documentary about how a a global entity humans are constantly moving farther and farther away from the land. Soil in particular was the focused upon part of the land in this film. After all, our whole lives exist because of the soil. Think about it... what do we eat, where do we go when we die, what is the most fun for a kid to play in, what are our houses made from. All of these things come from the soil.

More than just soil, we as a culture have become distant from every aspect of the land. The trees, the hills, the wildlife, growing things, water, and how all of these things interact to make an ideal environment. Not many people these days can go out and trek into a wilderness and find themselves content. Often they would need toilet paper or a dishwasher and all of the conveniences that come between. There are as always exceptions to the rule, and those people are to be learned from. Note: I am not advocating isolation from society and just living alone in the wilderness, but rather a happy medium where you can care for your land and for yourself in a social community.

Lets look at the Native American lifestyle. They knew that they relied on the land, and look at how well they cared for it. They knew that a forest would be healthiest if burned periodically. They knew that they should take only what they needed. They knew how to leave hardly a trace of their existence. Those things, that knowledge has all but disappeared from our society. Notice that it is a thrill to find pottery, or a piece of worked flint that was made by Native hands. Why is it such a thrill...? It is because those things, the signs of their impact are not the most common things. It was not even that long ago that they lost the majority share of the land on this continent. Now look at our signs. Our bright flashing neon signs. We have impacted everything. We leave a track like a wounded elephant through a bamboo forest. There is no way that in the same relatively short amount of time, our traces could be so imperceptible, so valuable to find.

We are an exploitative society. We take an take and give nothing back. We must start giving back to the land, caring for it, realizing that our livelihoods come from it. The signs of our bleeding earth are everywhere... smog, the great pacific trash patch, erosion, deforestation, etc. These aren't even the greatest of the signs.

One of the definitions for land is "to come to rest". I believe that this is exactly what will happen when we come back to our land. Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust. Lets get back to the land.