Letter From the Desert: Planting

Here’s how you replenish the Earth: you carry a long-handled shovel out into the incinerated desert. You might be asked to carry it a mile out and back, or only a few hundred feet. Either way, you will get to know its contours, the feel and heft of its handle, as if it was an extension of your limbs.

The soil is soft and deep, excepting in those places …