On Braiding Sweetgrass

I’VE HAD THE GOOD FORTUNE  this past week to have read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, an enlightened environmental book for our twenty-first century. It calls for mindfulness in reversing pollution that has beset our country for over two centuries.

Kimmerer was trained in the complex science of botany and environmental remediation. Still, her real contributions are expressed in the pages where she captures the unique importance of revering the gifts we share with Mother Earth – in a two-way street of reciprocity, gratitude, and thankfulness. 

She blends her roles as a mother, a scientist, and a member of the indigenous Potawatomi tribes, and her words reverberate with a call to action. It is simply the course we must take.

Kimmerer calls for humankind to reconnect to nature, offering insights and revealing the sacred relationship we all share with Mother Earth; it is a nascent call for introspection and knowledge sharing, and above all, a call to commit to restoring our environment. She asks readers to look to their own backyards and participate in healing ways, with sound intentions and an optimistic outlook.

In her own words:

It is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again… I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

“… As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us." RWK