"There is something fundamentally wrong with treating the earth as if it were a business in liquidation."

--Herman Daly, quoted in "Ecology and the Environment" by R. J. Berry

At an outdoor gathering about women's spirituality, I was present when a woman stood on the grass we were all on and said that a good thing to do is to take some compostible matter and bury it in the soil as a way of healing the soil we humans have ripped off so much.

The usual thing for individual composters is to compost--that is, create conditions for useful rotting--matter and then apply it to their gardens

She wasn't saying that, but saying to people who do that also bury elsewhere. And saying to people who don't want to compost as a way of life, that once is good, once counts. We've hurt the soil so much everywhere. We can move to heal it in many places.

She said this with a matter-of-fact intensity and brevity that seemed like how the soil would speak if the soil could speak, which in this case, it could.