There was an old familiar smell in the air as I stepped outside this morning. We are all familiar with it: the smell of the earth thawing from a state of suspended animation beneath the ice and snow. It is the smell of spring nearing. To most of us it is quite nice, not because it is an actual pleasant odor – the stench of all that dead plant matter renewing its decay with the warming temperatures – but because we know what it signifies. We have come to know that it heralds new life and a reawakening as the seasons change. But what this smell really means is something so much more.

           Like a lot of folks, I have come to enjoy having my very own vegetable garden. Not because I truly enjoy the work involved with the upkeep, but because I love the feeling of being self reliant. I know that my hard work will allow me to pluck a beautiful tomato from the vine and bite into my success. There is no sweeter taste than that of accomplishment in growing your own food. But I also know that I didn’t really do it all on my own. It was the life that grew and bloomed and died last season that froze with winter and thawed in spring that fed the microbes that fertilized the soil that held the plants that bloomed with flowers that were pollinated by bees so that they could grow the tomatoes that I harvested and ate. Sure – I planted the seeds, but I did nothing more than help nature do what it has done for eons. I merely had a say in where the plant grew. I have done nothing more than tap into the same system that our first farming ancestors did thousands of years ago. Am I more successful at farming than they? Probably – but that is because of the thousands of years that came between them and me, in which practices were refined through trial and error and passed on. We as human beings didn’t invent plants to feed us. We merely cooperated with the systems of nature to reap larger rewards. And so, in essence, I am not the beginning of the chain of life or the end, I merely link the chain back to its beginning. If my self reliance is dependent upon so many other factors, is it really self reliance or the success of cooperating with the community of nature? I believe that it is both. I have successfully relied upon my knowledge of nature’s systems and the history of all those that came before me. This applies to all of life’s achievements. It is the foundations built by the community as a whole that the successes of one are built upon. You may reap sweet smelling rewards now, but they were born in the stench of all that has come before. The winter will reclaim and reset. The cycle repeats.