This Halloween, I gave out candy to more trick-or-treaters than ever. Princesses in pink tutus, mummies in toilet paper, anime characters with lopsided wigs, and movie villains with bright orange buckets lined up at my doorstep. I commented on my favorites, admiring the thought and effort, but something bugged me. It wasn’t until the end of the night, as my partner handed out candy in the dark, did I finally put my finger on what was wrong. 

I’d seen almost no coats. 

Every Halloween, with my costume lovingly picked out and my bag ready at the door, I battled with my parents about layers. Undershirts. Leggings. Long underwear. No, Mom, I am not wearing a coat over my Monty Python Spanish Inquisition costume; if people don’t see my all-red outfit, they won’t get it (No one got it anyway). And every Halloween, in my childish hubris, I would be freezing by the end of the night, kept warm only by the excitement and the few extra layers I’d conceded. Yet this year, as I recalled the kids standing on my porch, I’d only seen a few long sleeves and a couple of light jackets on the babies tagging along with their siblings. Not one child had lost the battle of coats and layers with their parents this year. It was too warm. 

As I write this, the temperature outside reads 70°F, 16° warmer than the average high for my local area. Earlier this afternoon, I took my dog for a walk and instinctively went for the coat closet. I stepped outside, felt the warm sun on my face, and turned around. I left the coat inside and walked my dog in a t-shirt and jeans in the first week of November, feeling wrong the whole way. 

My lived experience of shifting global temperatures is mild. Friends on the west coast bemoan “Fire Season”, a phrase that didn’t exist twenty years ago. Families on the east coast keep hurricane evacuation kits alongside the snow blowers in the garage. Weekly, I tune into NPR to hear about mass floods, unprecedented wildfires, depleting reservoirs, and storm cells turning deadly. My unseasonably warm November isn’t necessarily new or frightening. It’s just one more reminder that the world around us is changing in ways that we individuals have little control over. 

Climate anxiety isn’t something we can cure. Until our world is on a better track, the fear and trepidation we feel about Earth’s continued viability will remain. Some may cope with this anxiety by helping maintain their local community. Others will turn this fear into political action. More will opt for greener products or cut meat from their diet. But many folks, like myself, don’t even know where to begin. This leads to my favorite coping skill for anxiety: research. 

Wanting to avoid science-heavy, catastrophizing climate work, I picked Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, a collection of non-fiction essays by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In these essays, Kimmerer blends her experience as a professor of plant ecology, her identity as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and her family history into a book about how we can productively interact with our environment. It’s not going to fix climate change–if it could, we’d be living in a green utopia by now based on how long it was on numerous bestseller lists–but it’s a primer for understanding the way the world around us works and, maybe, how we might work with it instead of against it.

This basic, introductory knowledge grows more important with every generation. When I was a kid, it was a little weird if you didn’t spend time outside. Computers required a dial-up connection, and video games were still niche and considered nerdy. As technology advances and green spaces shrink, I see the kids in my life spending most of their time indoors, hooked to their phones, tablets, or TV. It’s no longer weird; playing outside requires supervision parents can’t give, and there are dopamine hits on every piece of technology in the house. The already difficult task of reexamining our relationship with the land becomes harder when most of your generation doesn’t grow up having any relationship with it in the first place.

I’m not expecting miracles. Reading Braiding Sweetgrass won’t make us stewards of the land in one sitting. It’s a broader, more narrative approach to ecology and wasn’t written to help us identify species or explain difficult environmental concepts. But we all need to start somewhere if we want to battle climate anxiety and work to repair our damaged world. It can be a jumping-off point for us to find our place in our local environment, understand what it needs, what we can give it. Enough of us working to repair these relationships can help preserve local species and perhaps make a small dent against the damage that’s been done. 

I hope you’ll join me in reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass this month. If reviews are anything to go by, we’re in for a treat. You can find the book at your local library, your favorite library app (I’ve heard the audiobook is quite good), or in any of the links on the Book of the Month tab. I plan on reading this beside my favorite window, watching the thermometer during chapter breaks, and waiting for winter to finally sweep in. For once, when the cold eventually does come, I’ll be glad for it.