An inch of topsoil takes roughly five hundred years to form. We can lose it in a single season of careless tillage. This asymmetry should trouble us more than it does.
Soil is not dirt. It is a living system — fungal networks, bacterial colonies, arthropod economies — all conducting a slow commerce of decay and renewal beneath our boots. A handful of healthy soil contains more microorganisms than there are people on the planet. We walk on worlds we have never bothered to map.
The best farmers I have met speak about their soil the way good doctors speak about patients: with attention, humility, and a willingness to be surprised.