A Brief Visit from Tthe Fundament

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Michael J. Furniss

Hi, I am soil, topsoil, the Fundament. I dont usually speak, but imagine with me for a few minutes, and I will tell you of my wonder. Its time I have my say. I am guessing you never thought about me in all these ways.

Imagine with me for a few minutes. A twist in space-time happens, (zwip!). A little column over a mature vegetable garden rises. Outside turns in and inside turns out. Luckily, we are there when it happens. The topsoil rises into that column, and, remarkably, begins talking to us. TOPSOIL: Ahh, that feels nice. Hello humans. I have come up, up from the earth element into the air element, and can speak to you briefly. This will only last a few moments, so please listen well. I am The Fundament. , I am fundamental. I am Topsoil, and I want you to know me, to understand what I am and what I mean to you. Think about me as a tall column with many different layers. All differentMany colors and textures and materials, warm browns and yellow and reds. . I know that humans differ and you have many ways of seeing things and what is valuable, so I will try to speak to each of these. I am topsoil and I am old growth. I am very old. It takes 10 or 20 thousand years or more just to form one foot of me. And my complexity and productivity grows over time, but very slowly. Image this: You are inIf you were in a time machine . And you are lookingand looked at a soil in cross-section like, well, like me right now, . And if you speed the flow of time up so that you can actually see the soil growing, depth increasing, humus accumulating, structure getting more open and complex, and all, well, you would have to go at such a speed that the time machine way up to see these changes and at this speed of time, the trees growing would just be 'pulsing' in and out of the soil. Flickering in and out. I am the real old growth. I am topsoil and I am stardust. Every 50,000 years or so, an inch of stuff falls to earth from the burn-up of meteors from space. Since I am about half a million years old, that would make about 10 inches of stardust in me. The fundament comes from the firmament. That's me. You are walking on startstuff my friend.

I am topsoil and I am capital. Thats right, I am ultimate form of capital, the true wealth of the land; the basic investment and infrastructure from which all commodities and amenities flow on terrestrial Earth. Trees and grasslands and crops, fish and wildlife habitats, the water I purify and meter out are the profits.

They come from me, but I am not used up. Good capitalists never spend their capital, but build it. I am topsoil and I am bug poop. Yep, all of me has passed through the guts of soil arthropods, small bugs that live in me, at least once, most if it many many times. So, I am poop, bug poop, nothing but bug poop. Tell that to your kids. I am topsoil and I am habitat. Do you know where the greatest biodiversity can be found? Right here in my upper layers. It's true, E.O. Wilson said that a handful of soil is like the Amazon rain forest, just more diverse. I have tremendous species diversity, and I am teeming with intense and super complex ecological interactions. I'm hard to study, so not much is known about this part of biology, but we do know that I am the most diverse habitat and ecosystem there is. I am topsoil and I am tissue, like an organism turned inside out. I am alive. I have bones, the mineral part of me. I have organs, innumerable bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, arthropods, all sorts of living parts, and they each have a function. the gazillions of creatures that live all through me. Why, In every gram of me I have 5 billion live bacteria alone in every gram of me. And innumerable fungi, actinomycetes, arthropods, all sorts of living parts, and they each have a function. I have a digestive system. Put a piece of food on me and see how long it lasts. I eat constantly. I respire breathe as the many living things that I am respire. Elaborate or cut I have an enormous organic complex called humus that's like membranes that filter and sort and harbor and exchange and nourish the whole system. And I have blood., the soil water that flows through my capillaries and veins. I am topsoil and I am the plumbing system of the landscape. I am the plumbing system of the watershed. Most of any watershed's plumbing is inside of me. Think about what happens to a raindrop when it falls on the forest. Think about its journey to the stream. It first travels through me, through billions upon billions of little pathways, a vast matrix of little streams, tiny connected pipes, trickling and oozing through me. You might only see the streams that are out in the daylight, but the vast majority of the streams in the watershed are running inside of me. I am chock full of pipes. All those little pipes are the reason I am so important. You see without my intricate plumbing system, all the water would run right off during storms, with none left after the storms for creeks or rivers or for plants. But with a soil mantle over the whole watershed, water coming from the atmosphere enters an immense system of tiny pipes inside the soils of the watershed. I delicately meter out the water that falls on me, so that the creeks run between rains, and the plants have water when the sun shines. I am the headwaters, everywhere. My surface is the start of the watershed plumbing system, and so it is the headwaters. So you are standing on the headwaters of your watershed, no matter where you are. I am topsoil and I am the placenta of life on Earth. I am in the middle, between us and the forests and

the farms, between us and the mother earth. I am all productive. You could think of me as the womb of terrestrial life on earth.

I am topsoil and I am a vast reservoir. There's lots of empty space in me. In aWhen I am good healthy, soil about half the half of my volume is not solid, but is open for water and air to hang out and move through. About half Tthe water that comes into me from rain and snow drains away through me by gravity. Some quickly, some slowly, some very slowly. This slow drainage is what gets the streams through the long dry periods. I hold onto huge amounts of water this way. Without me there'd be nothing but floods while it rains, and dusty dry droughts when it doesn't. Without this function, there'd be no fish in the streams, no water in the falls, no crawdads in the creeks, and you'd need monstrous reservoirs indeed to hold back the torrents. Without me there'd be nothing but floods while it rains, and dusty dry droughts when it doesn't. The plants that grow on me need water all the time. About hHalf that the water that fills my pores by rain and snowmelt does not go downstream at all. I hang on to it, for all the plants that grow in me, and that need water all the time. . I hold it the water against gravity. This is what keeps all my roots and rootlets wet all over the watershed, water is hanging in me, lots and lots of it. In a am part of a 3,000 acre watershed here and I can holds over a trillion gallons of water I delicately meter out the water that falls on me, so that the creeks run between rains, and the plants have water when the sun shines.. I am topsoil and I am the plumbing system of the landscape. Most of any watershed's plumbing is inside of me. When a raindrop falls on me in the forest, it first travels through me, through billions upon billions of minute pathways, a matrix of little streams, connected pipes, trickling and oozing through me. The vast majority of the streams in the watershed are running out of sight, inside of me. I am chock full of pipes. Without my plumbing system, all the water would run right off during storms, with none left after the storms for creeks or rivers or for plants. I am the Headwaters: With a soil mantle over the whole watershed. I am the headwaters, everywhere. So you are standing on the headwaters of your watershed, no matter where you are. I am topsoil and I am the engine of the land; the engine of the watershed, the engine of the ecosystem. I run the productivity of the whole thing. Think of it like this: Organic matter is the fuel, decomposers are the cylinders, food web is the firing order, site factors are the carburetion. I am like the flywheel of the whole ecosystem. and the momentum storage smoothes out the bumps of disturbances like wildfire and the crazy things humans do to forests and grasslands.

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I am topsoil and I am stardust. Every 50,000 years or so, an inch of stuff falls to earth from the burnup of meteors from space. Since I am about half a million years old, that would make about 10 inches of stardust in me. Quite a bit. The cosmos is below you as well as above you. The fundament comes from the firmament. You are walking on startstuff my friend. That's me.

I am topsoil and I am the placenta of life on Earth. At the turn of the Century Chesworth called me the placenta of life on earth. I am in the middle, between us and the forests and the farms, between us and the mother earth. I am all productive. You could think of me as the womb of terrestrial life on earth. I am topsoil and I am a chemical factory. That's because I am made of a lot of very small particles, like clays and humus molecules. As a given volume of stuff gets to smaller and smaller particle sizes, the surface area goes up exponentially, and so there just huge amountwhich have greats of surface areas:in a typical soil, something like 12,000 square centimeters per gram. That's like 6 acres to the ounce. These surfaces are Active places And those are reaction surfaces, places where things live, where water and solids, and air react, where things stick and adhere, and exchange, and adsorb, and cohere, and all that. Most of my surfaces are electrically charged. Active places, these surfaces. I'm a churning urn of burning funk. I am topsoil and I am capital. Thats right, I am ultimate form of capital, the true wealth of the land; the basic investment and infrastructure from which all commodities and amenities flow on terrestrial Earth. Trees and grasslands and crops, fish and wildlife habitats, the water I purify and meter out are the profits. They come from me, but I am not used up. Good capitalists never spend their capital, but build it. I am topsoil and I am habitat. Do you know where the greatest biodiversity can be found? Right here in my upper layers. It's true, E.O. Wilson said that a handful of soil is like the Amazon rain forest, just more diverse. I have tremendous species diversity, and I am teeming with intense and super complex ecological interactions. I'm hard to study, so not much is known about this part of biology, but we do know that I am the most diverse habitat and ecosystem there is. I am topsoil and I am history. I form am a long-term record of land use and stewardship of each generation, and I am absolutely accurate. FDR said that the 'history of every nation is eventually written in how it cares for its soils.' I am an archive that records the stewardship of each generation. I bear the imprint of your wisdom or of our waste. I am the landscape's long-term memory. Yes the soil itself is a record. FDR said that the 'history of every nation is eventually written in how it cares for its soils.' I have recorded Mmany civilizations that were ruined because the people did not notice what I was and how fragile I can be: Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, Tunisia, Italy, Sicily, Portugal and eastern Spain just to name a few.

Farming and grazing and logging were practiced here on sloping terrain for centuries. The original fertile mantle of topsoil is simply gone, and with it the prosperity I once brought. Losing their soils ended the empires of the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, just to name a few. I am topsoil, the fundament of life of on Earth, and much like your soul. The connection between human spiritual longing and the soil is strong and abiding. IThe dark productive earth is like our own vast interiority. Our inner life is like a soil. Dark and all productive, it is hard to see, immense, manifesting a penumbral light at the surface that reveals only a little the depth within. It is easy to forget and neglect, but where all of our life and creativity comes from. We become soil when the time for our incarnation is done; human to humus. Stewardship of soil is part of many of your wonderful human spiritual traditions. Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in his covenant with God, was instructed to "Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell." (That's Numbers, Chapter 35, verse 34) . Seeing the land as the embodiment of the Great Spirit is prominent in many native cultures, such as the American Indians, the Australian aborigines and many others. In Buddhism all life forms are sacred. Aristotle viewed soil as the central mixing pot for the other element of the world, air, fire and water, in the formation of all things. Confucius taught that the earth's thin mantle sustained all plant and animal life and minerals treasured by people . The list goes on and on. The connection between human spiritual longing and the soil is strong and abiding. Our land ethics and deep appreciation for soil must be renewed, again and again, lest we lose our roots. I am the second chapter of the Manuscript of Nature that Hazrat Inayat Khan spoke of. The connection between human spiritual longing and the soil is strong and abiding. IThe dark productive earth is like our own vast interiority. Our inner life is like a soil. Dark and all productive, it is hard to see, immense, manifesting a penumbral light ??? UNCLEAR at the surface that reveals only a little the depth within. It is easy to forget and neglect, but where all of our life and creativity comes from. We become soil when the time for our incarnation is done; human to humus.

I give you birth, and wealth, and water, plants and animals, and form the tissues of your history and sustainance. I am the landscape, inside and out, your vast inner landscape, holding all. I am many things. I am even more than that which you need. Humans to humus. I am you. I have to go back in now.

Remember, as humans you are the stewards of old growth, of the organism that is the landscape and the Earth, the plumbing system, engine, and reservoir of all watersheds. You are stewards of the most diverse habitats on Earth, and the placenta of life on Earth. You are keepers of the stardust and the bug poop, and builders of an enduring historical record that will faithfully record your wisdom or your folly. [picture: collage of soil] Acknowledgements: Kerima Furniss for her adept editing, Andy Moldenke for the bug poop insight, and Sheik Aslan Sattler for helping to stoke the engine room inspiration.