Issue 300 A Publication of the Docent Council, Martin Griffin Preserve of Audubon Canyon Ranch © August 2016 Life Underfoot By Gwen Heistand The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all. Wendell Berry
I spent much of my youth in woods and fields, creeks and ponds, salt marshes and coastal strands of the northeast. There were times, especially in the spring, when I was so overcome by sunlight on dappled leaves and the smell of wet, fertile earth that I would throw myself into the leaf litter with wild abandon. I would dig down so my eyes were at the level of wild lily-of-the-valleys pushing up through the earth. I would burrow into moist patches of skunk cabbage, feeling mud ooze between my toes. I would insinuate myself among the roots of pale touch-me-nots, and spend hours popping seed pods – my own private firework display. I was part of everything and everything was new and old at the same time. And of course the longer I spent wrapped in moist leaves and soil, the more I saw. Eventually I would turn over and the view of upwardly mobile plants shifted to earthworms and pillbugs, spiders and beetles, tiny hoppers and bright red mites going about their business. An old magnifying glass opened up an even smaller world … life teeming underfoot.
Even the name given to the soil and leaf litter environment is laced with the promise of discovery – the cryptoshpere – the hidden world. Some folks have called it the poor man’s rainforest, indicating the magnitude of species diversity and all we don’t know. Leonardo DaVinci said back in the early 1500’s, We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.
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A Look at What’s Inside Fall
The Co-Presidents’ Ranch Guides Have Special Needs Kids Fall Kit & Trail Days More Dispatches from A Refresher on the Page News! Visit MGP Are Coming the Road Newest MGP Docents Otherwise known as Not only news, but Pamela Gach saw a And to whet your Aimez-vous les Before a new class Diary of Docent new officers! Read need and dove in to appetite, a very choses francaise? takes shape, we bring Recruitment! all about the season fill it. Now kids with detailed schedule is Don’t miss Lydia you the last bios from that just ended. special needs have a provided. Mendoza’s photo the Class of 2015. Page 2 program, too. essay. Page 3 Page 6 Pages 16, 17 Page 4 Page 11