


– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 37-38




not belonging


– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 17






no soloists


Make fruit only when you can afford it. That makes sense. But trees grow and accumulate calories at different rates depending on their habitats… But they don’t. If one tree fruits, they all fruit – there are no soloists… The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t know yet. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual.

– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 13-16

Mast fruiting is the “boom and bust cycle” of certain plants, which instead of making fruits and seeds in a consistent yearly cycle, produce a huge amount crop at seemingly random times (14). In order for mast-fruiting trees to sustain themselves, each one fills their roots with sugar and starch to their very tips. When the time is just right, they make fruit all together, all at once, enough for feeding the forest and for birthing new trees (15).

trees talk

… trees are talking to one another. They communicate via pheromones, hormonelike compounds that are wafted on the breeze, laden with meaning… The trees in a forest are often interconnected by subterranean networks of mycorrhizae, fungal strands that inhabit tree roots. The mycorrhizal symbiosis enables the fungi to forage for mineral nutrients in the soil and deliver them to the tree in exchange for carbohydrates… [They] may form fungal bridges between individual trees, so that all the trees in a forest are connected… they weave a web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival.

– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 20


A gift creates ongoing relationship… [it is] something for nothing, except that certain obligations are attached… That is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value increases with their passage… the currency of a gift economy is, at its root reciprocity… from private goods to common wealth.

– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 24-29

I was just thinking about gifts. Christmas just passed and all the while leading up to it, there were talk of gifts and one of the most awkward questions I hear every year, “what would you like for your gift?” I’ve never easily answered this question – well maybe as a kid I asked for chocolate or stuffed animals – but in my more mature years, I’ve never felt comfortable asking anyone for gifts. It feels too much like some superficial exchange, a thoughtless Secret Santa.

The earth gives to us every moment. My mother gives to me each and every day. What more could I possibly ask of her, especially during a time that has become the prime celebration of commodification?

Still, pushed by the Gregorian calendar, deafening carols, and family wishlists, I give in to the season, tricking myself into thinking I could make someone happy with a dishcloth, when I could be doing the dishes; dumplings, when I could be cooking dinner; books, when we could be making stories worth writing; and money, when we could be building common wealth.

There’s just something that doesn’t sit right with me. It’s as if these gifts are slowly cutting off my relationships instead of creating them. It strips away my attention, time, and care into scraps of gift wrap and loose ribbons. Gifts are made every day, but many are received without appreciation. I think if I understand and take time to be thankful for all the gifts I receive, I can truly give back meaningfully. Because I want to give back. To my mom, my partner, the land, the trees, and all the critters in between.

the pull of a compass

cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are… they are like a compass: they provide an orientation but not a map. The work of living is creating that map for yourself… [which] will be different for each of us and different for every era.

– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 7

How strong is the pull of a compass? Or a series of compasses? How do we read compasses? Some must be harder to understand than others. Perhaps the difference lies in the reading.