ABSTRACT
When we talk about learning something from practical experience, we say we need to get in there and get our hands dirty. Increasing urbanization means increasing separation from practical knowledge in many areas of land use-separation from getting our hands dirty. American society has reached the point where “fresh air kids” are sent from New York to what amounts to smaller cities for a week in the “country.” Many members of our society have never grown anything but houseplants potted in soil that comes packaged in plastic from a store-a packaged, sterile experience of what soil is and does. But, soil doesn’t begin wrapped in plastic, any more than do the meat and produce people buy at the supermarket. When we forget that we are reliant on what our earth produces out of the fertility of that thin, fine layer of topsoil, we become wasteful, and we put ourselves at risk. We underestimate the value of our soil. We clear-cut it, we pave over it, we expand our communities needlessly on it, and, through carelessness and unconcern, we poison it. In short, we waste it.
