Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
I’ve been reading this book for quite some time — for some reason, I took a longer break, then returned to it, determined to finish it. (An odd reason to read a book, I now notice.)
It definitely rewarded me.
I have a pronounced interest in both writing and in nature, and I’m greatly interested in how we humans write about nature. This is a home question, or it’s an aspect that opens up many questions. How do we write about nature. How can we? Is it separate from us? Are we in it, of it, or both? Are we in it, of it, yet somehow separate from it?
In this book, the author writes about being in relationship with nature and with the world as it is. She writes about de-objectifying the world, both in scientific practice and in everyday life: rather than making what surrounds us the object of study or converting it into something “useful”, we should recognize the living beings that inhabit the world with us as subjects, as our neighbors, even roommates, and always as something that we depend on, that we’re in relationship with. Through her discussions of indigenous practices of reciprocality, her detailed descriptions of how flora and fauna interact throughout the seasons, with her unsparing account of how a chemical company destroyed a landscape in a couple of decades — the boundaries that exist between our thinking minds, our emotional bodies and the world around us begin to soften.
Wall Kimmerer also makes an argument for caring about what we do. When she asked a group of students about their motivation for working on restoring a superfund site, they spoke of “adequate data” or of finding a “feasible dissertation” theme. She points out that no one spoke of loving the world – while also pointing out the perhaps unfortunate fact that words bordering on the emotional are generally unwelcome in dissertation committees (page 335).
But really, love should be a great motivator in all we do. Of course, we can’t love every minute of our experience in this world, but loving means caring, caring means caretaking. And we could use more of that. Or better: we have a deep and binding responsibility to do more of that.
She closes the book with these words:
The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honor our responsibilities for all we have been given, for all that we have taken. It’s our turn now, long overdue. Let us hold a giveaway for Mother Earth, spread our blankets out for her and pile them high with gifts of our own making. […] Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice, and vision all offered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world.
In return for the privilege of breath.
Braiding Sweetgrass, page 384.
