Soil and Spirit by Scott Chaskey

Scott Chaskey stimulates so many lines of thinking.  Wedded as I am to my devices, I could not but help chase down reference after reference in “Soils and Spirituality”, even after telling myself that just one or two might be sufficient to frame this review.  But which ones? Evidently any of them.

Chaskey is a writer.  Whether writing in prose or presenting us with rich poetry, he invites us, even beckons us, to broaden and deepen our understanding of what I call regenerative gardening.  And better that we should do it quickly:

“Quick, quick, as rain falls/Remember your rake! Today peasants sow the seed“

He does not deliver instructions informed by wisdom and insight, as did Rudolph Steiner in “Agriculture”, rather he succeeded in broadening and deepening my understanding of the relation of regenerative thought to ancient forms and ideas.  Both men, Steiner and Chaskey, use their skills as though working patiently in an ancient quarry and both observe their world with keen contemporary eyes.  The topics at hand are different, Steiner warning of the dangers of inorganic agriculture and Chaskey to a broader audience urgently confronted with the need to rethink and adapt.  This includes gardeners.

I want to explain that my relation to this book is that of a gardener now more or less devoted to regenerative practices and thinking of the soil regeneration movement as it might be practiced in the American community garden.  Within the regenerative movement is a sense of returning to that which we see as essential and eternal in rocks and soils, in plants and landscapes, in people and community.  I don't think a day goes by that I do not think of soil and fungi, community and sociology, science and spirituality.  This work, “Soil and Spirit”,  landed with me just as I began to approach the organizational and sociological aspects of community gardening and the ritual January practice of garden planning. I’ve recently been reading academic papers by sociologists on the tension between collective thought and organized individualism of the American community garden.  I find much work to do, carefully.

Chaskey’s book was a most welcome diversion from community gardening.  At first slightly overwhelmed by references, I soon recognized I had to try to be still and let him be a guide pointing out as many avenues of inquiry as I might later pursue.  He glides and flits, as do his poetic birds, seeding the land, offering paths I found to be fungal rather than static or merely bibliographic.  His story telling is immersive and personal.  Just long enough too hold our attention they often end with the personal and poignant as when he concludes a discussion of clay and potters

“The products I most respect and cherish come in the shape of bowls and plates and cups (formed on the wheel by potter friends in Cornwall) I hold in my hands daily”

Personal narrative on the woods of Maine, the rocks of Ireland and the heather of Scotland established a solid foundation to trust the author and know he is capable of awe, even standing in a field.  You and I do that, too, if we're lucky.  Chasky can write about it. Discussing his own observation of peasant-farming in contemporary China (a strong line of inquiry, for me) he uses quick lines of verse to hurry us toward, or back to, peasant ideas of bounty and beauty:

“A quick breath above winter grains:
the sharp-shinned hawk
dives from a locust post”

Or, discussing rock, establishing a firm hold, a strong foundation:

“I had my existence.  I was there.
Me in place and the place in me."

The book is a masterpiece for the regenerative, farmer and gardener, familiar with the language of plants, soils and single celled organisms, who seek to place regenerative thought within the context  larger universe.  Chaskey offers many journeys, whether you want to travel 6000 years to China or back as far as 2 billion years to blue green algae. There is a living connection today to those first thoughts and practices of a successful agriculture and Chaskey recognizes and describes his first hand observation of it as easily as he describes the practices and people themselves.  It sometimes seems he wants to offer us everything all at once, but this is only because he sees that every moment has its context: physical, historical, ecological, cultural, spiritual, etc. each connected to an unknowable whole.

The “Spirit” in this title is suffused throughout the book because Chaskey is telling stories of people he knows and the practices of civilizations and of tribes.  Artisans, priests, farmers and many, many writers whose passions reflect the action of spirit upon them and their work.  These spirits and their archetypes have evolved with us, and with our agriculture, since the dawn.  I was recently struck by the idea, for which I lack attribution, that all living things on earth are equally evolved.  For Chasky this is so much larger “as if syllables and stone evolved through centuries of communion”.  I have been taught that faith permits me to see the spiritual and the Devine acting in my life and I know my life is better for it.  I am also aware of some of the dangers in that thinking, but Chasky’s testimony is reassuring.

In the end, I’ve concluded this work is fundamentally and unarguably fungal; it’s a mycelial network of branching thoughts and observations, prayers and poetry, science and spirit.  Each hypha traced backward toward its source and connected forward with new growth.  I was easily drawn to a thread about Charles Perkins Marsh, a Vermont diplomat, linguist and naturalist. His work “Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action” published in 1864 is considered by some to be as seminal to agriculture, ecology and land use as Darwin’s “On the Origins of Species” had on biology and evolution, both towering contributions in their field.  Close proximity and a shared Vermont citizenship (and evidently not the knowledge that there is a building named for Marsh on the U.V.M. campus) inspires me to look closer knowing I’m entering another fungal community.

I invite you to read this book and see if something similar doesn’t happen to you, too.