This week's key to the cosmos, and the meaning of life: thin-ness.
We're not talking weight loss; rather the marvel that so much of what is vital to life occurs in such skinny slices of the biosphere.
We marvel at the boundlessness of outer space, yet it is only in the lowest sliver of atmosphere that terrestrial life can exist.
Ocean depths fascinate us, but it is in the coastal marshes and shallows, and muds of the continental shelves, that the huge bulk of aquatic life thrives.
Nothing exemplifies life's propensity for little layers more than topsoil, the merest gossamer skin on our thick globe, but the only part that grows green plants.
Such thoughts of thin miracles occur in a Worcester County woodland, where last week soil scientists George Demas and Dick Hall showed off Maryland's new "State Soil."
They brought the tools of their trade: a hand-driven auger-like device, which requires enough muscle that Demas once cracked ribs extracting soil cores with it.
They also brought their bible, as Demas calls it: "Keys to Soil Taxonomy, 5th Edition," plus a book of color chips of every hue in which soil occurs, and a plastic spray bottle.
Hall twists, slicing the auger's hollow head through the forest roots and down about a foot, pulling up a plug of fine-textured, brownish yellow soil. Demas scrunches a fist-full and crumbles and sifts it through his fingers, like savoring fine wine.
"Some of the best we've got," he says.
Another twist, a deeper core, this one more moist, and slightly heavier and darker; and another, this core turning a distinct reddish brown.
This, the scientists explain, is classic Sassafras, a soil type that virtually defines "prime" or "Class 1" agricultural land across much of Maryland.
It is one of some 1,500 distinct soils identified in the United States, one of 34 types that occur in Worcester County alone.
But this year, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of mapping the nation's soils, Maryland will put Sassafras in a class of its own, declaring it the official state soil.
It did not happen without spirited debate within MAPSS, the Mid-Atlantic Association of Professional Soil Scientists, recalls Demas.
Hagerstown, an excellent Piedmont soil named for the area where it was first identified, had strong support.
Others championed Othello, a "hydric" soil that underlies wetlands. Othello is not prime farm soil. But wetlands have become such an issue that a hydric soil ought to be given recognition, supporters felt.
