What We Owe the Soil

Underneath a healthy forest floor, a network of fungal threads connects root systems across whole acres, quietly moving carbon, water and warning signals between trees that share nothing else. Seven palm trees stand outside my window, each one older than I am by decades.

When the southeaster comes through hard, they bend and they hold and I've started wondering what they know that I don't.

Underneath them, in soil I'll never see, roots are talking to each other. Trees pass warnings and nutrients to one another through a network older than any system we've built above ground.

Less competition down there than we assume. More cooperation than we give nature credit for.

Have I thought about that, the part of the world working together while the part I can see keeps score.

A farmer plants a seed without knowing what the season will bring. Rain, drought, blight, none of it is guaranteed and still the seed goes into the ground.

That's not naivety. That's a kind of faith most of us have stopped practising, the willingness to act before the outcome is certain and trust the ground to do the rest.

I think that's what we owe the soil. Not just care, though it deserves that too.

We owe it the same faith it shows us every season, taking whatever we plant and working with it in the dark, without proof, without applause.

I don't always trust that easily. I want proof before I commit, a guarantee before I plant anything, whether it's an idea or a relationship or a change I keep circling instead of making.

The soil doesn't ask for that guarantee. It just keeps doing its part in the dark, season after season, whether or not anyone's watching.

What would you plant today if you stopped needing to see the harvest first.