                                 EARTH
                              Gavin Greene

This is how it begins.  Sleet and rain are called from the sky.  Their
impact  slowly changes the surface of a granite outcrop... Frost cracks the
sides of a mountain..  A wind called The Destroyer weathers great tables
of land brought up from the surface of the earth.  This is the birth of soil.
The mountains move, gravity calls rocks and dirt to the rivers below. 
Swift water, bringer of life and death, carries debris and the bones of
fishes to the plains beneath the bodies of mountains.  Floods rise leaving
layers of stuff worked from centuries.  Wind and water move particles of
soil to a place where it can be still and welcome the touch of a seed.  If
the weather is right the seed will take hold and interact  with the earth
through growth, death and decay.  The plants add their properties to the
soil.   Bacteria and small life forms live there, they eat and convert their
food to different nutrients.  They die and disintegrate, building rich earth.  

Spring floods move top soil from the middle of the continent to the gaping
mouth of the sea.  The hot breath of dry years lifts dust and layers
it on the foothills below the mountains.  Volcanos erupt sending clouds of
ash into the sky where it is carried by wind and the spin of the earth to
drift down somewhere else.  This is how the soil moves and builds into
something with the ability to support life.  Plant life, animal life, human
life.

The earth is a living being.  We are a part of that being.  Most of us
have lost that connection and are desperately searching to find it again. 
These words are not a map.  That was lost long ago.  A few humans who
live in rocks, along river beds, in the great deserts, still carry the map
in their bodies.  Ever notice how your feet contact the ground?  The ground
is rolling away from you.  Remember to correct for the tilt of the earth.
Follow the path that registers in the pit of your stomach and indicates
direction by the blue tingling at the ends of your fingers.  I cannot
guarantee that you will find what you're looking for.

Spend some time alone with a mountain or rushing river.  Notice how small
you are.    Walk, breath, listen.  After a while you will see that you have
left the trail.  Do not concern yourself, you can not get lost here.  You
live here.  Over there by those rocks, see, a few strands of  fox hair, a blue
feather.  Eventually it will all return, as will we.  I want my body placed
in the earth to decay over centuries and  become part of the planet it
sprang from.  That is the true order of things.
