The dirt here is clay-like, silty and you can taste its dust. Like blood. I think it must taste like blood. I put plants in it. I push them into holes and surround them with the tinny, bloody, dirty soil and say to the plant: “Plant! Don’t die!” and cover all the bloody dirt around it with decomposing bark. I find earthworms in puddles and show them where to go; to make the soil whole again, rich with life. Not clumpy and sticky like this dirt. That dirt there, too.
I’m used to richness; to the thick, black dirt of Wisconsin that holds plants easily, not tightly. It’s weird to dig in this soil, wrought from glaciers and long-eroded mountains, or slumped dangerously through valleys in heat and fire. I feel conscious of the fact that this is not my land. That, indeed, I’m from somewhere else. Somewhere with field stones covered in moss, shallow swamps and pools, deciduous trees with smaller leaves. Some place less primordial, more planned and refined. This is both good and bad. Mostly, though, I miss the sun.
