Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Soil has been described as the skin of the living world.

Vital, reactive, fragile, and thin.

And like our own skin, soil contains and protects a living interdependent ecosystem that

breathes, digests, and is finite in its ability to revitalize itself when harmed.

Industrialized large-scale agriculture has poisoned the earth soils with chemicals. Monoculture has dimmed the

vibrancy of its community, and the continuation of such intense practices are making it harder

for Earth to recover. The UN has warned that less than a lifetime of harvests are left before soils

become too degraded to feed the global population.

If all life is inextricably linked to the loam and hummus beneath us, what will our world

look like if we continue to abuse it?

In this story from our archive, author Jay Griffiths offers a love letter and a prayer to

soil and the abundance of creatures that

nourish it with their humble, life-giving work. Marvelling at worms, fungi, and the pioneering

water bear, she invites us to remember that soil is what turns the earth's barren rock

into the riotous life we know. Considering how heavily we tread upon the land,

Jay wonders how we might tune into the cycles that sustain the living world

and commune with soil from a place of reverence.

Thank you. The earth of my garden is the heart of my home.

All summer my garden is the heart of my home.

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