The creek that was once a fishery for Atlantic salmon, a swimming hole for kids, and a focal point of community life now runs as brown as chocolate milk. Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world. I dream of a world guided by a lens of stories rooted in the revelations of science and framed with an indigenous worldview – stories in which matter and spirit are both given voice. Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize so that just by being, just by shimmering at the meadow’s edge or floating lazily on a pond, I could be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun. Everything is steeped in meaning, colored by relationships, one thing with another. One thing I’ve learned in the woods is that there is no such thing as random. An economy that grants personhood to corporations but denies it to the more-than-human beings. The very earth that sustains us is being destroyed to fuel injustice. It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility. The streams would run back up the hills to the springs and the salt would stay glittering in underground rooms. If time could run backward, like a film in reverse, we would see this mess reassemble itself into lush green hills and moss-covered ledges of limestone. These are antidotes to the poison of despair. Your finger trembles with a wish to detonate the explosion of an obsolete dam that would restore a salmon run. Your hands itch to pull out invasive species and replant the native flowers. We must recognize them both, but invest our gifts on the side of creation. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer.Īll powers have two sides, the power to create and the power to destroy. It’s not just land that is broken, but more importantly, our relationship to land.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer.īut the world is still unpredictable and still we survive by the grace of chance and the strength of our choices. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer.Īs Gary Nabhan has written, we can’t meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without re-story-ation.

Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer.īut the world has a way of guiding your steps. To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language. In some Native languages the term for plants translates to those who take care of us. Transformation is not accomplished by tentative wading at the edge. The word ecology is derived from the Greek oikos, the word for home. Robin Wall Kimmerer is an Environmental and Forest Biology Distinguished Teaching Professor in the United States.

Robin kimmerer