Under Our Feet
An irresistible and playful journey through a unique underground landscape
Most of us have a more accurate picture of the deepest depths of the ocean than we do of the ground beneath our feet. A handful of earth can contain thousands of animal species, metres of fungal threads and billions of bacteria. Soil is also an archive, and digging a kind of time travel. In De Grote Peel, a protected Dutch peatland, Nikki Dekker finds a world of interconnectedness from which we have much to learn, especially for those looking for the ‘why’ of existence.
Dekker tunnels, back in time past the mole cricket and talking moulds, land consolidation and peat extraction, to now-extinct aurochs (the ancestor of all cattle) and the invention of the clock, by way of the year 0 to when whales and giant sharks swam overhead, all the way down to 300 million years ago. Fascinating stories lead to existential questions. Between each historical layer of soil, Dekker introduces playful philosophical exercises to, for example, ‘become friends with creepy crawlies’, ‘practice being dead’, ‘enrich your habitat’, and ‘be what you are’. In our busy screen-oriented world, she explores the healing power of feeling rooted in a landscape and maintaining a sense of natural history’s more expansive timescales.
Part investigation, part activity book, part journey through time, Under Our Feet is an eye-opening plea to learn about our surroundings, to live alongside other species, and to understand where we come from. In the end, the big question of why we exist is perhaps best understood as an exercise in giving attention to people and planet, wherever that may be.
Written in a light-footed literary style that will make you want to get outdoors
The author braids her investigative journey with her personal experience in daily life
For the readers of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Merlin Sheldrake, Robert Macfarlane and Annie Dillard
“Under Our Feet is full of enchanting facts about soil life and musings about the advance of time, carbon and ecological restoration. Nikki Dekker’s amazement is highly contagious.”
“A wonderful book about depth and what it takes to share the world with other life forms, under and above ground.”
