Appearances can be deceiving…
Why do we humans feel as though we must be able to visibly see an injury or debilitation, for it to be real? You can’t see many life-threatening diseases/conditions, but just because we can’t see them with the naked eye, doesn’t make it/them any less fatal. I’m a good example of that. I have a couple of very debilitating health issues, yet I look perfectly healthy. Sometimes, when someone tells me how “great” I look, I wish I could unzip my innards and let them see the truth.
This is how I feel about our soil, our water, and our air. A casual viewer might look at a conventional garden or farm, and think, “that’s a really nice-looking garden”. It might have straight mono-cropped rows, no weeds, and the ground as bare and clean as a swept floor. When I see that, I feel sad that the farmer doesn’t know, or care, what they’re doing to the world underneath. The world where the roots must take up nutrients and moisture, and where the vital exchanges take place between microbes and fungi, and plant roots. Instead, this garden is dependent on high inputs of fertilizers, as well as herbicides and pesticides, to get a decent harvest. Each year, this garden will yield less and less nutrient-dense food, because of the invisible “disabilities and disease” that’s being created below our feet.
Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. When the disability or disease becomes impossible to overcome, the ground can no longer yield. There’s no life. At this point the “patient” must be allowed ample recovery time, and “medicated” with nutrient-rich matter, to bring back vitality. Life and health don’t always begin, or end, where our eyes can see. And damages done, through ignorance, or lack of understanding, is still damage. Just like with we humans.
The Tennessee Dirtgirl
