I don't think I'm alone in my culture that I tend to view the earth as something we walk on, build on and navigate across in our life journey. Rarely do we pause to think about how dynamic and alive the earth, trees, birds, bees and even the dirt and the air we breathe are. The Maya of antiquity famously thought of life in terms of cycles, and spending three days observing the earth take in deceased matter and return it to the material realm I exist in as life again, I too was thinking cyclically. In an organic farm, such as the one we were working at, all sorts of processes practiced, constant compost creation, applying the used cardboard as fertilizer for plants, removing dying leaves from plantain trees and laying them at the base of the tree for soil consumption, and so on. It's hard to imagine the more mechanized farms we deal with in the states utilizing any of these methods. The farmers we worked with seemed to understand how to harness these cycles, their understanding of this dirt must be so intimate, so connected for them. At break times they would often just pluck a pineapple or a watermelon growing in the site, slice it up with a machete, and split it up amongst themselves and, gratefully, us as well. This land is their primary provider, in every sense of the thought. --(Daniel Klear)