Every farmer knows his dirt. For the rest of us, the ones who simply go to a grocery store where the food somehow just shows up each day, dirt is, well, just dirt.
Agronomists know dirt scientifically. They study it in cross sections or cores, labeling layers rich in humus (the O layer on top) through a mixed level of humus and mineral matter (the A horizon), and then downward, in an idealized model, through the “zone of eluviation and leaching” (E horizon), the layer of accumulation of transported clays (the B horizon), and finally the partially altered parent material (C horizon) that sits atop unweathered rock.
Dirt isn’t, as the uninformed believe, just dirt. It’s a complex of organic and inorganic matter that develops differently under different climatic conditions, over different kinds of bedrock, and through different surface processes. Some dirt, for example, forms in one place and then travels to another via streams, winds, and glaciers. As I have written elsewhere, soil particles from Africa can be found in the Amazon.
As we all learn in elementary school, dirt is an important resource. It’s loss or degradation decimates agriculture and affects a food economy. The American Dust Bowl of the 1930s is historic proof of soil’s importance.
But like so much of place that we take for granted, dirt only attracts the attention of most of us when it interferes with daily living. Gotta keep the floors clean, right? And then along streams there’s that costly cleanup of mud after a flood. Why can’t we just keep dirt on farms where it belongs?
Although dirt is indispensible to our survival, most of us find it a nuisance. That says something about our disconnectedness with what we are: Most of us pay little attention to what underlies our existence. And that applies to the ubiquitous social, cultural, and philosophical underpinnings of our lives. When something becomes a nuisance, an immanent threat, or an immediate necessity, we pay attention, and we learn something about it.
Learning about dirt serves as a good analog for self-examination. Each of us moves across fertile and infertile social, cultural, and philosophical grounds. We can take them for granted, fail to examine the layers, and wait for a loss or degradation, or we can dig to study their origin and composition, to see the layers all the way down to the bedrock.
Agronomists know dirt scientifically. They study it in cross sections or cores, labeling layers rich in humus (the O layer on top) through a mixed level of humus and mineral matter (the A horizon), and then downward, in an idealized model, through the “zone of eluviation and leaching” (E horizon), the layer of accumulation of transported clays (the B horizon), and finally the partially altered parent material (C horizon) that sits atop unweathered rock.
Dirt isn’t, as the uninformed believe, just dirt. It’s a complex of organic and inorganic matter that develops differently under different climatic conditions, over different kinds of bedrock, and through different surface processes. Some dirt, for example, forms in one place and then travels to another via streams, winds, and glaciers. As I have written elsewhere, soil particles from Africa can be found in the Amazon.
As we all learn in elementary school, dirt is an important resource. It’s loss or degradation decimates agriculture and affects a food economy. The American Dust Bowl of the 1930s is historic proof of soil’s importance.
But like so much of place that we take for granted, dirt only attracts the attention of most of us when it interferes with daily living. Gotta keep the floors clean, right? And then along streams there’s that costly cleanup of mud after a flood. Why can’t we just keep dirt on farms where it belongs?
Although dirt is indispensible to our survival, most of us find it a nuisance. That says something about our disconnectedness with what we are: Most of us pay little attention to what underlies our existence. And that applies to the ubiquitous social, cultural, and philosophical underpinnings of our lives. When something becomes a nuisance, an immanent threat, or an immediate necessity, we pay attention, and we learn something about it.
Learning about dirt serves as a good analog for self-examination. Each of us moves across fertile and infertile social, cultural, and philosophical grounds. We can take them for granted, fail to examine the layers, and wait for a loss or degradation, or we can dig to study their origin and composition, to see the layers all the way down to the bedrock.
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