Dad’s eyes were closed as though he was in a calm sleep as he lay that evening in the hospice facility’s bed, him finishing the last of his mortal days. I considered how it was one of the few times he’d really looked calm in a few weeks — the pain from the cancer gnawing his bones mixed with pain-killing narcotics and the truth that death was so near feeding him a steady stream of uneasiness.
And then, his right hand lifted from its resting place on the thinned bones of his rising and falling chest, which for most of his life was covered with muscle and sinew of a lifetime of farm work. That hand’s work-gnarled fingers made a somewhat familiar motion, and then his hand started moving as though it was pulling a handle for a short distance up and down.
I watched in wonder for a while until the familiarity of that motion reminded me about what he was doing: He was working the ratchet of a socket, the depths of his subconscious apparently pulling forward some sort of memory of working on one piece or another of our farm’s machinery.
It wasn’t the first time such a memory had roused through the conscious of his unconscious condition. Early that week, in other phase of sleep, he’d asked my oldest brother to harness the team of work horses – work horses that hadn’t walked across our farmyard and fields for more than 50 years.
Those moments came to mind while I was sitting out and contemplating the land on and around our farm on Eimon Ridge. It was World Soil Day that day of my contemplations, and I’d gotten to thinking about different ways folks have treated and mistreated the soil since us two-legged critters crawled out of the water and started treading upon this old terra firma. Most of all, though, I thought about how that soil can change a person’s life if that person is ready and willing to recognize and understand how we’re all really part of that soil, like it or not, and how the soil really is part of us, like it or not.
The soil, more than any other thing that can get into your system, is powerful once you realize it. Watching my father’s mind take him through the day’s farm work even while he was lying on his death bed was a good enough indicator to convince me of that reality.
Folks get other stuff in their blood, of course, and that’s all fine and cute. Some have the sea soaked into their beings; some have flying in their systems. Having spent the better part of my life writing for newspapers, old-timer newspaper folks have told me I have printer’s ink flowing in my veins; I’m proud to accept that claim.
But oh, that land; oh that soil.
We are of the soil; the soil is of us.
I considered how my old bones won’t be returned to a drum of printer’s ink when I’m fully used up and I get called from this life. Instead, it will be that beautiful soil out there that will be absorbing my mortal bones, hide and all.
We always go back to the soil.
Some really smart folks have been pointing out to me during the past decades of my life that there are many people who are a few generations removed from the land. They’re referring to those people who don’t know how food is produced and might even think that it’s somehow made in the aisles of a fancy grocery store. Those smart folks, I suppose, are right in that it would be better if those far-removed from the land would return every now and again to get a little silt loam lodged beneath their fingernails and in their nostrils.
That seems like a grand idea mostly because maybe the people will better appreciate what it takes to feed the hungry masses of critters biped, quadruped, winged and swimming. And then, maybe they’ll push for more care of the soil on which they’re plodding along, assuring that it doesn’t erode and that its caretakers take special measures to assure that all the good and natural biological stuff that makes the soil tick is properly maintained.
On the other hand, though, I figure we might as well simply realize that nobody who lives is any more than the next step away from the grand soil. A soul can deny it as much as wanted, but we can find ourselves headed back to that soil at any minute.
Those of us who’ve had good doses of soil running in our systems throughout our lives know what it’s like to understand the soil’s true goodness – that it isn’t there for our convenience and that it’s only been temporarily loaned its attention. We understand that it was there for a long time before we ever were around and that it will be there for long after we’re gone.
Those of us who are of the soil know all too well that there’s no leaving the land; we always manage to make our way back to work on it or to simply spend our time fawning over it.
Those of the soil will understand why their father is doing farm work while lying on his death bed.
— Scott Schultz
Rural Routes 