The man talking is an astrophysicist who heads a research program called SETI. For seventy years this “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” has broadcast all manner of signals into space with the hope that ET would reply. So far there has been nothing. One day they thought they had something when the doorbell rang. It was a pizza delivery from “an anonymous admirer” Being scientists they observed that it was a vegetariano supremo. Was this a gift from an alien, or was it the alien? Not sure what to do, they took a picture of it to send to NASA and then ate it.
I just made that up. What counted most was his closing remark: “In all of the universe the thing that is most rare and precious is SOIL”. He really did say that.
We are in the living room of a house in Hawaii. It is in fact the northern most house on Big Island. We are there to consult with a famous soil scientist. All of the windows are open and the doors. A gale force wind is blowing through and we are asked to sit down wind from her because she has environmental disease and can’t risk smelling us. She wrote the “Guide Book to Hawaiian Soils” that I have in my hands. It has a chart that she prepared showing soil quality in the islands. On Big Island the chart shows one tiny little rectangle of good soil. We ask her about that. She says we have seen it already. Coming from Hilo to her we passed a big housing development under construction. Beneath it is the only top quality soil. We ask her where to go to find the good stuff. She says “Have you been to Costa Rica?”.
We are in Costa Rica and celebrating our good fortune. We have purchased an abandoned coffee plantation and this is our first day here. A local farmworker, looking like a garden gnome, is here to show us our new home. He left school in third grade to tend coffee with his family on this property and knows it well. Rainy season has just ended and there are many large leaves laying wet on the ground. He reaches down and picks up a handful of them. He carefully peals back the top one. Between that and the next is a lacework of white slimy scum. “Es muy bueno para la tierra nueva!”. We are surrounded by new soil being formed in this way. He pats the trunk of a Poro tree and reaches down as if he were the roots. Then he makes a gesture of lifting, raising up over our heads at the sky and then falling leaves. He says in English “phosphorus” muy bueno!
During an Ice Age, glaciers form inland and slide toward the sea. The weight and motion grind entire mountain ranges into powder. As things warm, the glaciers recede and it is very windy at the edges. The powder that was under them is exposed and is carried far into the sky by winds where it circles the globe. This is called “rock dust”, something every gardener knows is extremely important for productive soil. Typically, what follows the edge of a glacier as it recedes is the edge of a new forest thriving in the rock dust. An ice age becomes a spring of forest.
What is soil? Is it dirt only, or something more.
Its a big subject, isn’t it? And you probably know more about soil than I do, but here are some interesting things:
Dr. Paul Stamets heads the Mycology department at the University of Oregon. He says that his students have discovered the largest living thing. Its a single soil fungus organism that networks together thousands of trees over an area the size of a county. They know its one organism from DNA studies. And in some sense it is conscious. We can say that because it is known that soil fungus conducts forest management by moving nutrition to the roots of specific trees sometimes over great distances. We also know that trees talk to each other. Scientists have identified at least 50 “words” that they transmit through their social media network via soil fungus.
Of course, we can say that soil is different from dirt in that it is a complete and complex habitat for a profoundly rich array of residence, but in addition, soil seems to be a community actively discussing all manner of things right there below our feet. Who knew?
It should be said in passing that fungal networks are recorded as fossils in rocks 2.4 billion years old and may represent the oldest life form on earth. In rocks 2.8 billion years old similar structures are found that may not represent life as we know it, but may instead be a type of crystal that looks like fungus. It is speculated that such crystals fell from space and that space itself may have the same structural pattern.
Coming down to Earth where we stand it can be noted with pride and satisfaction that the soil on Montavia Estate has been chemical free for more than 35 years. The estate is organic, all of it.