Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

My philosophy professor recommended a book when I attended his class a few semesters ago. I bought it back then, but it hung around on my nightstand for a while. I’m finally on page 310 of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I understand it’s customary to review a book after you’ve completed it, but it’s better for me to write about the book I’ve almost finished than what I really want to write about, which might get me disappeared. I’ve got children to think about.

I took the book out to lunch a few weeks ago and got the chance to describe it as beautifully written to a young waitress who balked at the words “Indigenous philosophy.” I told her it was about our connectedness with plants, both scientifically and spiritually, and she told me she sat more on the gardening side of plants and less so the philosophical side of them. I wish I had thought to ask her what she planted, I often feel like I’m prying. I, unlike my waitress, am interested in the subject of Indigenous philosophy. I am into the idea that humans can find balance in nature, I’d say it even feels pressing.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Kimmerer’s explanation of the science of plants and their relationships with us and each other woven with metaphors from her life. She relates clearing a pond on her property to the unrelenting work of motherhood. I shared her satisfaction when she figured out she needed to first let the heavy algae dry out on the bank before moving it. The lightness of that first sheet! It must have felt amazing. She includes a chapter about a man trying to bring back a forest. As she describes the science and philosophy behind the reconstruction of the forest, she consistently returns to him cutting back thorny vines to allow room for the new growth and your left with a sense of the labor of it, and the care. I felt like I was out in the forest with them, learning about the cedars. Sometimes my life feels like I’m trying to regrow a forest, perpetually hacking at the unwanted vines just so I can make my way through. But like the man I am clearing a path for old growth trees, that makes the work worth it. He gets it. 

There’s a great story about a trip into the field with her students for a few weeks. She mothers the kids and the land at the same time she is a botanist teaching. I related to her frustrating attempts to share with them her worldview and have it not be received. By the end her students come around, Kimmerer lets the forest do the talking. She taught me right alongside them about the wonder that hides in nature if you are curious enough to find out. We learn how to build a structure using the materials of the forest. She patiently walks us through the potential uses of each part of the cattail. She teaches us how to read root systems. She encourages us to try. I’d like to say I related to Kimmerer here, but instead I wished I was at a place in life where I could stay in the woods digging up roots for five weeks in the name of my education. I wanted to be one of her students. I’d dislike sleeping on the ground, but I do love to be outdoors and if I had someone with me who could answer all my questions about any plant in the area, I’d find botany pretty interesting.  

Kimmerer’s scientific-mind combined with her sense of poetry expanded my curiosity in nature. I was intrigued by her account of why water droplets vary in size out in the forest, something I had never noticed—and I notice a lot. Her writing makes me want to take a walk in the woods and spend time sitting on a rock looking around. Kimmerer conveys a passion for not only the scientific inner workings, but the spirit of nature as a living, breathing being we are privileged to interact with, and who benefits from our genuine appreciation. This sense of reciprocity between humans and the land returns again and again in her writing. Harvesting partial batches of sweetgrass ensures a more productive crop. Chopping down some trees in order to make baskets counterintuitively allows for more trees, and in turn, more baskets in the future. The forest and the basket weavers help each other as long as neither is too greedy. She is deliberate in her warnings to ask permission, and to never take more than half. Kimmerer emphasizes that if we take from nature only what we are given by nature, our flourishing is mutual. Our care not to overfish, overhunt, or overharvest ensures all will benefit, illustrated by nature’s balance in The Gift of Strawberries, Wisgaak Gokpenagen: A Black Ash Basket, and her retelling of The Three Sisters. If I had thought to ask the waitress, I’d want the three sisters, corn, squash, and beans, to be her answer to what do you grow in your garden. I could have asked her why and she’d tell me that when these three crops are planted together you get more of all of them then you would if you plant just one. I could have told her that’s what it says in my book! My timid nature robs me again.

I’ve adopted a new habit I’ve learned from reading the wisdom in this collection of essays. When I walk into the forest on my hikes with Ink, I pause briefly to ask if I can come in, and then I listen for an answer. Sometimes Ink hears a gunshot at the shooting range and is too spooked, so we turn around. Sometimes crows scream at us to stay away, and we abide. But most days I hear “Sure! Don’t wreck anything please.” and I let Ink pull me in eagerly as we both sniff in the spores. Instead of my stress, I consider each step on the slippery fallen leaves covering the path ahead of us. I watch the light shift across the terrain as we descend toward the stream. I let myself marvel at how different it looks from yesterday. I feel grateful the forest let me in. I let out the length of her leash and Ink leads me down the hillside to the water, she knows the way.

At the outset, Kimmerer tells us that “becoming Indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered” and certainly we could all benefit from more of this perspective. Caring now about the sustainability of the plants and animals that will serve future generations also serves the generation that’s already here. Recognition that we cannot exist without the land we live on should be front of mind. So much of this wisdom has been conditioned out of us, but Kimmerer promises if we are observant and respectful we can ask the creatures here to teach us again.

I’m sure Kimmerer would inspire a brilliant end to this review had I read her last 70 pages, but at 80% of the way through I can tell you it is a very good book. I’ll lend it to you if you ask me, but I’m going to finish it first.