buried in my head

One part of Dirt made me want to tell William Bryant Logan to read Anastasia and the Ringing Cedar Series, if he hadn’t already. I started to google his name to find some email address, but eventually gave up.




When William Bryant Logan talked about the use of fish heads on soil (properly, by native Americans and improperly, by colonists/settlers) I thought about the fish gut water I sprinkled on the organic garden at my sister’s house.



The part about worms made me think of many little moments. One was when I tried to keep a rolly-polly as a pet at school. I also thought of the earthworms that I’d buy at Devil’s Lake in North Dakota when I’d go fishing with Papa Jim (my grandfather). I fearlessly speared those wiggly things over and over on the hook.



When Logan talked about making soil, and the worms (bugs) would come, I thought about the composting I started on the back deck. I haven’t checked on it in a while, but it definitely had been crawling with critters by the time the bin was almost filled up. For some reason, I thought this was a bad thing, the life…like they were messing up the composting process somehow. And then I pictured myself smashing the eggshells smaller or throwing the avocado and banana peels in the blender to make it easier for breakdown/digestion.



My mind thought about AP Environmental Science with Mrs. Lawson my freshman year in high school. I learned all about the soil horizons, their order, type, color, size, etc. Now, all I have left is that horizons A, B, and R exist.



Rammed-earth architecture. You can sometimes distinguish layers (depending on how the maker wants the wall to look) but they are unlike soil horizons. They don’t breath with life. Water must seep and break them down. I wonder how the bench in the UT courtyard is doing. It’s corners were crumbling before I left. I want to build a space created by walls with horizons. Probably glass or plastic would sandwich it (it’s all I can come up with this second / picture in my head)-- like the jars we fill with layers of colored sand. And maybe a gopher could live in the wall, if it was topless. I could watch him make tunnels, and the dirt mounds he’d create at the top would overflow. Dirt would fall over the glass, making it dirty.