TERRA

Pick up a handful of soil and it does not look like much. Dark, a little damp, a few roots and stones.

It is also the oldest archive we have. Last summer's wheat is in it, the leaves of every autumn, the walls of houses nobody remembers. What grew here once is still here, only in another form.

Xenophanes lived more than two and a half thousand years ago and wrote down something farmers had always known. Everything that rises out of the ground goes back into it. Grain, trees, animals, cities. People too.

That can sound heavy. Standing in a garden, it rarely feels that way. The ground that takes things back is the same ground that gives the next season.

Nothing is lost here. It only changes hands.

Most days we walk on it without a thought. Once in a while it is worth stopping to feel it under your feet. It carried everyone who came before you, and it is carrying you now.