Disturbed Soil

My family moved to Greece during my early childhood.  While we were living in a densely populated urban area of Athens, in my dreaming eyes the countryside was a marvel of beauty where I could have the freedom for explorations. Greece is a small country that retains huge diversity of landscapes, habitats, and ecosystems.

Topsoil is the source and home of all life on earth, microbes, fungi, flora, and fauna.  Topsoil is vital source of water and food for living creatures, as important as the air we breathe.  This soil creates and wraps the magnificent landscapes we treasure, worship, and enjoy.

Human activity as well as natural phenomena amplified because of us, are damaging the thin layer of soil, the skin of earth, that takes thousands of years to form. Intensive agriculture, destruction of forests & wetlands, immense grids of roads and surface mining are just a few reasons for this destruction. At places topsoil disappears completely under the huge expansion of the urban areas or the extreme exploitation of the land.

I am now walking on the many layers of man-made land on the “natural” landscape of my memories. While the memory of the old landscape is fading, the newly created topography is what I see now and must accept.