Old farmers sometimes taste a little soil to ascertain the pH level, and I’m aspiring to be an old farmer someday, so I touch my tongue to the soil in my hand. Is it sweet or sour? Hard to tell: I’m too wary to go beyond a tentative lick. Eating dirt is not considered civilized behavior, and we are trained from an early age to shun the dirt, to set up sharp dividing lines between ourselves and that which might contaminate – physically, and spiritually.

In this handful of dirt, more living organisms thrive than there are human beings on earth.