Humans have roots. Don’t believe it? Maybe you could see it more clearly in a vacuum. Void of air and pressure and all the regulated status quo that keeps you whole. Or skip a meal, skip a day of meals, tell me if that root twisting your gut isn’t real. And what water is born out the ends of faucets, enters existence when you lift that lever and let in the slightest bit of air. Vomited out metal mouths sick from drinking so much rain and right out of aquifers and buried branches and rivers, up all night the night before. You and I have roots. You and I have nothing without roots. To claim human freedom, yet charge for shelter, water and food sources that feed them, is giving nothing but a word. We are born into and raised by and educated within wholly human worlds. But we are not even a tenth of our environment. We are not even a good wide window view of this planet. More like a weird, fat-headed, plastic-minded, clay creature conglomerate. A person on a patch of land they owe tax on, hungry for food they can’t pay for, thirsty for water buried beneath a bill. This is not freedom. Up until around a hundred years ago America always had wild places wild people could disappear into. Around three hundred years ago America was filled up by people who ran out of wild places in Europe. We are the inheritors of a people who knew freedom was not a state of being. It is a form of currency. Responsible for the roots that feed you. Ownership, as much as possible. What the hell can I do about fast cars and sports bars and suburban living and charitable giving. These things aren’t going anywhere. At least not as fast as the forests. The classroom that first taught us to human. We need to start out life in this place, and choose, really, out loud and conscientious, decide when we want to leave it behind. We can never be a free species while that choice is made for us. While all our roots trace back to dollar signs. And I think we need to be reminded. The human hand did not shape the human mind. The earth did.