Some loves are born out of necessity. As one of four children in a one-car household, I walked everywhere I could: elementary, middle, and high school; my first job; friend’s houses; dates. It didn’t matter if it was a block away or across town, I’d meander through the streets of my city, dressed for work or for a day of finding new places to loiter with pals. It continued through college as I walked miles for groceries or an art exhibit. I didn’t get my first car until I was twenty-two and, even then, I found reasons to walk. I still do. 

Walking through suburbia taught me to love a good bit of landscaping. A manicured park, with trees in neat rows and flower beds dotted between. A nice lawn with a tire swing in the front, the bark on the tree worn from hours of swinging. Neat bushes, trimmed into bulbous shapes and trellises bring ivy and roses along the side of a house. No matter where I am, or who I’m with, there’s a chance I’ll slow down at a house and appreciate a well-thought-out garden or a beautiful walkway bordered by annuals. It’s a love born out of constant exposure and a need to slow down and view my surroundings. It’s my way of stopping and literally smelling the roses. 

November is often the last month I can manage regular walks but it can be hit or miss. A long-lasting cold front or early snow can keep me inside for the rest of the year. As it happened, not long after posting my introduction to Braiding Sweetgrass, a cold front arrived. Shut inside, I walked around my living room instead, book in hand. When I finally had a chance to go on one of my outdoor walks again, I was nearly halfway through the book.

This time, strolling through my neighborhood, I didn’t find beauty; I found loneliness. The flowers that were still hanging on stood tightly in their rigid rows, bordered by blank dirt and grass. Most trees were isolated, with nothing but a mound of dirt and a decorative border to keep the grass away from their roots. Every piece of plant life was an island, drifting in a pasture of pale dirt choked with grass. Braiding Sweetgrass had altered my idea of aesthetic beauty built up over twenty years of walking in a matter of days.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants is a collection of essays that ask us to reevaluate our relationship with nature. The essays range from focusing on a single form of plant life to covering entire regional ecosystems, the author managing to be both personal and vulnerable in her appeal for perspective. The book asks how we might rediscover our reciprocal relationship with the plant and animal life around us and what kind of world we’d like to leave for future generations. 

There are three main ingredients to each essay: the science of ecology, her personal history, and indigenous culture. Alone, each of these might fail to elicit the response Robin Wall Kimmerer aims for. A science-heavy essay on ecology, for instance, might cause many readers to tune out, or a personal memoir might be interesting but hold no stakes in the revitalization of the environment. Together, though, these three distinct patterns of thought elevate each other. The scientific knowledge paired with indigenous understandings of a plant creates a more holistic view of the plant’s existence. The way algae reproduce in a pond and the way a mother must learn to let her children go creates a way for us to empathize with plant life. The author braids these three pillars of her work much in the same way she might braid sweetgrass, each strand supporting the structure of the other to create something beautiful and whole. 

That said, bringing those of us so disconnected from nature into empathizing with an entire ecosystem is no small task. Kimmerer uses format and sequencing to her advantage, putting more personal, single-plant-focused essays at the beginning of the book and slowly expanding the scope of the essays to cover more and more ground until, in the end, we end with a worldwide call to action. By braiding the three strands of her work together, she builds a strong foundation, tying science with emotion and elevating plants to the same level of individuality as humans. It’s a book-long task for many of us who have been separated from nature for most of our lives. I’d wager that this book is more successful than not in turning people toward their local plant life and questioning the rigid garden fences. 

After all, questioning is what this book aims for. You can’t heal a divide without acknowledging that it exists in the first place. The rift between humans and nature has been exacerbated to the point that many who are born today do not know about their local ecosystems at all. Companies who have decimated a local ecosystem will plant something green on top and, in our ignorance, we will clap and accept their apology without considering whether the species they plant will restore the original ecosystem. We buy things at the store, often unable to tell exactly where all the components came from, unsure if the items were created through exploited land or labor. These disconnects between us and the gifts the world grants us only grow wider as the supply chain removes us further from the source. 

The disconnect that rocked me was not the machinations of capitalism and consumerism; it was the disconnect inherent in our language. In the essay, “Learning the Grammar of Animacy”, the author recounts her experience trying to learn the Potawatomi language, where seventy percent of the vocabulary is verbs. As any polyglot knows, verbs and their many, many conjugations can be one of the most difficult areas to conquer in any language. The author admits her initial frustration, unable to understand why the word “bay” is instead replaced with the verb “to be a bay”. Then, it clicks: the language of her ancestors is one where all natural things are alive. The water is alive. The plants are alive. The animals are alive. They are granted the same verbs of being as a human, granted personhood. That connection is severed when translated into English, the bay, the birch, and the beetle are relegated to fenced-off nouns, to becoming “it”s. Nature, in my native language, is robbed of any agency. If that separation is built into our languages, it translates into how we think. How else might our language be walling us off from the world?

With such epiphanies and deep questions raised throughout the book, I do have one regret: I read it too fast. As a collection of essays, each essay is dense, profound, and important. Reading five or six in a sit-down may leave your head reeling, begging for a break from the hard truths hidden in the pages. Take my suggestion: read one or two essays a day, one in the morning and one at night. If you come across a particularly long one, maybe just read one for the day. Each essay needs time to sink in, to marinate. Reading too fast can let some of the essays lose their power. I can’t wait to revisit this book in a few years and see what I might have missed in my eagerness to let the book occupy an afternoon. 

I was right in my initial assessment of the book, which is a rare treat itself. However, that didn’t stop me from finding surprise and joy in the prose and ideas Robin Wall Kimmerer fit in such condensed pieces. It’s forced me to change the way I look at the world during my walks, and the way I feel about the world around me. I’m filled with a need to read up on my local wildlife and see how I can help. Some loves are born out of necessity. Nature needs that love right now. 

I hope you’ll join me next week for our last book introduction of 2022. I’m excited to share with you all what’s in store for Tea Reads in 2023! Until then, take a walk with a tumbler of warm tea and pay special attention to the world around you. Nature lives all around us. We need to see it to begin to heal it.