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Rock Dust Story Reveals Glimpse Of Eden

By James Donahue

We noticed a story a few years ago about an English couple that discovered how super-rich the dust from a rock quarry can be in their garden. The story strangely dramatizes how much our planet has been stripped of its nutrients by human encroachment.

Retired school teachers Cameron and Moira Thomson used rock dust and compost to convert six acres of open and infertile land near Pitlochry into what they called a modern Eden.

The soil was enriched so much that they claimed they were growing cabbages the size of footballs, onions bigger than coconuts and gooseberries as big as plums.

Somewhat misguided, however, the Thomsons had the idea that the Earth can be saved if everybody grinds up rocks to rejuvenate the land. They believe replacement of the minerals lost in the soil over the past 10,000 years can grow super plants and perhaps even halt climate change.

While the enrichment of the soil might make things green again . . . if only for a while . . . the super heating of the planet may have reached a point where it is out of control, a team of scientists has concluded. If they are right, the planet is doomed to an early death, and we are all headed for extinction.

It would take a lot of rock grinding to overcome that.

The Thomson experiment has dramatically shown us just how much damage the human race has caused to the Earth during the thousands of years that we have farmed and exploited it.

Instead of keeping the covenant and being stewards of the magnificent Mother who gives us life, we collectively raped and pillaged her until we drained her life energies.

Consider the planet as it was when we first arrived. A plush rain forest, with giant trees, and fruit so large you could make a meal on one picking. When white settlers first came to the Great Lakes only a few hundred years ago, the lakes were teeming with fish. The early fishermen told of scooping them from the waters by the net full.

This writer personally remembers in his youth being able to scoop nets filled with smelt from various Michigan streams during the spring smelt runs. Nobody sees numbers like this in the streams today.

Most of the damage was done within the past century.

We could have stopped it as recently as the 1970s. Even though the Hippies, their eyes temporarily opened by the psychedelic drugs they were experimenting with, sounded the alarm and called in loud voices for us to change our ways, we did nothing.

The environmental laws that were passed as a result of that movement have since been stripped of their effectiveness by the Bush Administration.

The zombies still remain in control, but this is changing. The youth, who are sensitive to the call of our planet, have just forced an important change in U.S. leadership.  Unlike the fat, rich money people who resisted change or doing anything to keep them from further exploitation of the planet for personal wealth, there is hope now resonating around the world that America may soon be a leader in a movement for cleaning the air, land and seas.

Who knows, if we solve some of these hard ecological problems, the idea of grinding rocks to make our soil fertile once more may be just what is needed.