Thoughts on Sweetgrass
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmermer is the perfect antidote to following current events.
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmermer paints a picture of the natural world in exquisite detail, weaving scientific knowledge, stories of her life, and Indigenous wisdom. I listen to her read her audiobook while walking, driving, cleaning out the fridge, with sparks of inspiration illuminating my mind like fireflies. After spending time with her reading, I easily conjure those magical insects, lighting up the dark space just below trees’ leafy canopies and rising from gardens like fairies at dusk. They are fleeting, rising to the tops of the trees, and mostly disappearing by the time the sun is gone. When I see them, I resist a child-like desire to catch them in a jar like I did when I was a little girl in East Texas, because I don’t want to disrupt them. Now I visit them every summer in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina where we participate in a folk music gathering (think adult summer camp). I almost forget the magic of fireflies between trips – and the accompaniment of the music - The reverberating sound of bullfrogs, the buzz of cicadas, stringed instruments of all kinds, and human voices blending in song as people gather for jams under tents. How easy it is to succumb to the stories of the day in the news, the ick of awareness of meanness, both on a local and global scale. But Kimmermer’s stories bring me back to the magic of fireflies, even though so far her stories’ settings are nowhere near the place of my summer visits. It reminds me - The whole of nature is connected. Perhaps we are like aspens that appear to be individual trees on the surface, but are deeply interconnected for miles beneath Earth, one giant organism composed of a million intertwined parts.
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