Wendell Berry is one of my heroes.  He writes lovingly and insightfully about the natural world.  In this short excerpt, Berry helps me to think of soil in a new way.  Soil seems humble;  after all, it’s dirt.  But what a powerful life force it is!

     “The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil.  It is very Christlike in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness.  It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness.  It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it.  It keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but as richness, new possibility.  Its fertility is always building up out of death into promise.  Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future.”

                          –Wendell Berry, Recollected Essays 1965-1980

This entry was posted on Friday, August 26th, 2011 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Celebrating our beautiful Earth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.