soils: there's more life under than over

Well the lessons on soils have been awesome. Underneath our feet there's a world that we have only started to describe, discover and understand. As Geoff put's it you can easily get lost  if you dive into soils, there's so much life, interaction and energy underground that we can hardly imagine.

When you start thinking about soil fertility, and how we have destroyed so much, it's incredible to understand that soil could recover by itsef if only we stopped destroying it's world. Yes, I think we can speak of a world under ours that we have only started to recognize, it's a bit like the depths of oceans and sea's, we know so little.

Soil could recover it's fetility by itsef but what we have to do, as designers, is to accelerate this process, and in doing it make it sustainable.

We actually don't have to think of soil as the cradle of our yields, and this is the nice thing of permaculture ethics, yields are an output of energy, a surplus, that becomes achievable after you have cared about the earth, about soil. And this caring has to be seen not as a opportunistic interaction with soil, we're not aside of earths life we're part of it. Until humankind will think of it's presence on this planet as something that sits aside of nature, aside of the planet's life, we'll never get out of the imbalance we live in, that we have created.

The best concept I have learned from the lessons on soils is: balance. We have to be part of the balance, we can generate imbalance very easily, thats why we have to always start from observation, there's always some other living organism that has found the solution before us, it's just sometimes difficult to see it. And of course if you don't observe you'll never be capable.

Geoff speaks about the balance created by plants in relation to pH acidity or alkalinity, and that's incredible, nature has transformed problems in solutions to gain balance. This is the point every living being interacts with others and has a part in this story thats life.

We are actors of a selfwriting story where we can decide if we want to recite with the smallest of microbes or bacteria as equals or if we want to think we are the directors of the story.

As designers I guess we will understand which is the role we play, everyone of us will play a different part, but everyone part is important. I can't even imagine the complexity of what some microbes do for earth care. 

Soils was a chapter of the path that has been involving thought and action. Of course we discusse how to act on fertility, and how to accelerate the soil fertiliy recovery, but what set me thinking most is that everytime we take action we're thinking of what we're doing.

What I like most of the notes that I'm writing is hat I see how my vision is shifting, different aspects have caught my attention and probably all my classmates would have a different view.

It's nearly over that's what I start thinking sometimes, we're in week eight there's only four lessons left, but then I realise it's never going to end it's just starting!