Green Tribe of Belonging

We all probably know that living things don't stop at ground level, even though we can't see what's there. When we dig in our gardens, we run into earthworms and nematodes, and probably other little bugs. Last fall I took my small Nature Studies class on a tour around Prairie Hill, looking for life under or on the ground. We lifted up logs and big rocks, peered under mulch, and dug into holes. It was during a drought, so many things had probably gone deep. But we did find all sorts of small beings crawling around, and even a toad. And that was right on top. It was just the outskirts of the world of life beneath our feet. I'll admit it is hard for us to imagine what it's like in the soil. For one thing, it's hidden from us. For another, the life is so tiny there. To get a real picture, I have to put myself into a mind frame where I can imagine I'm one of the inhabitants of soil, maybe a bacteria. In my tiny self, I am surrounded with a whole world of life, bi

 Sometimes I just wish our current civilization could start again, all of us beginning as simple humans with simple lives, living as part of the environment, interacting with life around us, learning from it, depending upon it. We need an experiential tutorial about living on earth. After centuries of separation from our roots, learning from our childhood that we are separate and above the rest of nature, it's a hard mindset to change. Feeling separate from nature is in our psyches. It's how most of us have learned to visualize our world. And everything in modern life contradicts the reality that we are just another life form and totally dependent upon the whole. I don't want to caste shame here. Shame is not useful. And this is a worldview that has been developing for thousands of years. It is not my fault or your fault. But we do have to figure out how to change our perceptions of our place in the world. Otherwise we can't survive. It's that simple, unfortunately.

 "When you wake up and you see that the Earth is not just the environment, the Earth is us, you touch the nature of interbeing. And at that moment you can have real communication with the Earth....We have to wake up together. And if we wake up together, then we have a chance. Our way of living our life and planning our future has led us into this situation. And now we need to look deeply to find a way out, not only as individuals but as a collective, a species."  from Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh. I've been stirred by hints of spring this past week, and it has motivated me to start making plans. I've ordered seeds, shrubs and trees. I've researched how best to get more fertility into my garden soil, and how to get my soil tested. And motivated by Thich Nhat Hanh's encouragement to look deeply , I started exploring the whole phenomenon of soil, what it is made of, how we know healthy soil, how soil evolved in the first place. This jus

 I've just finished reading The Seed Saver by Diane Wilson. And it is still haunting my thoughts. The book is about so much more than seeds, about the civilization of Native Americans, and about the white settlers' thoughtless and cruel treatment of these peoples they/we displaced. It's a heart-gripping tale of generations of Lakota women who preserved their families as best they could, carrying their sacred traditions in their hearts, and their sacred seeds sewed into their clothing as they were forcefully taken from their homes and moved far across the country.  And then, as if that weren't enough, their children were grabbed and placed in boarding schools that aimed to eradicate the Indian in them. It's a very sobering chapter in our history and any remedy has been too long in coming.  Rosie, the main character in the book, was taken from her home when her grandfather died and despite having family members who could have taken care of her, she was put in foster