It's hour five of our six hour drive day, and we have all reached peak hysteria. My stomach hurts, my eyes are watering, and everything Everett is saying is the funniest thing I've ever heard. We have left Patagonia, Arizona, having learned about an environmentally damaging mine soon to start production in the area, and are headed to the Salton Sea, America’s worst ecological disaster nobody has heard of. This has been the nature of our program, meeting with speakers, learning we are cooked, getting in the car, then off to the next we go. We’ve experienced record weather events, witnessed examples of irreversible ecological damage, and have been acutely aware of the environmental dominos of every scale falling in the west. As a natural human response to tragedies, I have found myself craving stories of hope. Searching the patterns throughout nature and tuning into the ways the land recovers, I aim to take a page from the book of the west that lies before me.
So when Kate Tirion, a founder of the Borderlands Restoration Network in Patagonia Arizona, a woman whose voice and vibrance hooked us all, mentioned the miracles of soil, I was completely struck. Soil connects every inch of the west, and is the reason we eat and live—a large organism made up of billions of smaller ones, working together to nurture our plants, our foods, and our bodies. Its steady base holds us up, tends to us, and shows an example of strength, connection, and resilience that we search to find amidst all the tragic truths every voice we hear seems to echo. We have laid on it, walked on it, peed on it, brought it with us in our clothes, our bags and our food. In it, we’ve made ourselves completely at home. If I'm to take a page from a book of the west, what chapter could possibly have more wisdom to offer?
Just like mycorrhizal networks, underground paths of roots and fungi that connect plants and spread across the whole earth, we people are completely intertwined and reliant on each other. While plants share nutrients, water, and wisdom, we share stories, advice, joy, and experiences. We were lucky enough to get a brief and impactful morning with Kate. She showed us her home, shared vulnerable stories, and gently led each of us to dive head first into this beautiful, sunlit life she has created. At the end of a house and garden tour that showed a clear picture of resilience, preparation, and blissful joy, we asked her to leave us with one piece of advice. “Wake up and softly smile,” she said, then embraced each and every one of us. “Fill in your mosaic piece and do it with someone who motivates you and makes you LAUGH.” While the connections throughout the soil are based on water, carbon, nitrogen, and organic matter, human connection is built so heavily on laughter.
The soil in the west is drying up, losing its ability to hold moisture, struggling to support plants, and being forced to recover after devastating events, while we humans are experiencing the same in our own ways. Our microbes are being killed, and we are being sprayed, artificially fertilized, and tilled and tilled and tilled, no longer able to regrow with our same vibrance. In our search to find ANY reason to believe we will have lives resembling Kate’s garden in spite of these dire times, we often asked speakers what brings them hope. 99% of the time, they said, with a sweet smile and pensive expression, “You guys. You guys give me hope.” I honestly groan each time because how on earth are little old us going to fix the mess that is the west. But when Kate expressed the same sentiment, it started to click for me. If she could hear us laughing all the way across her property, and if she is right, that laughing is a vessel toward resilience, then maybe we are in fact the hope. Maybe with each moment of car ride hysteria between speakers, with each song and debrief, or moments at cook crew “getting deep” and dancing around, we are fostering our own mycorrhizal networks. With each laugh, nutrients are spreading throughout our fungal pathways, and we are becoming less erodible, more water soluble, and thus increasingly disaster resilient.
I've learned an immense amount of things this semester. I've experienced the good and the bad, the hopeful and the hopeless, had my eyes opened to so much, and yet what I will remember most is this group of people; my fellow fungi. With each day, with each change of plans, with each rainstorm and trash spill, we have built up our resilience. We have absorbed every inch of the limited precipitation in the arid west, and created the most nutrient rich soil that's ever sifted through my fingers. We are so capable of growing the most beautiful garden, and not only do I believe we already have, but I know we will continue to do so wherever we go. So if you find yourself falling victim to hopelessness, I'll pass on some wise advice that I've heard. “Wake up every morning with a small smile, and continue forward with those who inspire you, and most importantly, make you laugh. For YOU, you are the future, and you are what brings me hope.”