Minnesota poet Joe Paddock provides an environmental commentary on the essense of the land.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) One of the most fruitful ways of looking at land is as a single complex organism of interrelated Parts just as a deer or dog is made up of many interrelated organs heart. I'd I and intestines land to was made up of interconnected parts or organs. There is mineral content, of course in large part eroded or leached from Rock and there is the decayed matter of once living plants and animals what is often not thought of however is the enormous amount of actual life that is present and part of a Healthy soil we are talking here about insects worms nematodes endless swarms of microorganisms Millions to the teaspoonful which in their life processes break down once living matter into an important constituent of healthy fertile soil. It has been estimated that an acre of healthy topsoil will contain as much as 11 tons of such soil life the soil organism consumes oxygen from the soil air and gives off carbon dioxide and the summation of the multitudes of respirations. Characterize the metabolism of a soil individual, hence. I designate soil is a living system. This living system is sort of a processing medium through which old life passes into new if old life were not constantly broken down into soil there would soon be no soil and no new life within the land organism. We must also include the larger life forms that cyclically rise from it and return to it. We are talking here of plants animals. And of course the human race looked at from the point of view. We have just been describing all life becomes an extension of land. Our interconnectedness with the land organism is perhaps most apparent in the food we eat in recent times. However, awareness of even this connection has weakened many children assume that food is somehow produced in the back of supermarkets. They upset when they learned that hamburger for instance was once the fat and muscle of a living animal all forms of life, including our own our organs of the greater life cycle our bodies to must in their time return to the Earth but civilization has in many ways shielded us from The life-and-death cycles of the land organism birth is hidden from the view of most Americans and death is sanitized and slaughterhouses hospitals nursing homes and funeral parlors fertilizer for our Fields is drawn from the fluids of plants and animals that lived ages ago and delivered to us in tanks. It is therefore hard for us today to really feel in our bones how everything in its time goes back into the Earth to feed new life and yet this may be the most fundamental of all truths to ignore it. It is surely a mistake. cake