Wylder Earth

If you’re interested in understanding how we can ensure human-nature relationships are more gentle and reciprocal Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a beautiful offering.

The book draws on Wall Kimmerer’s experience as a professor of botany and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She brings together these ways of knowing to explore what plants can teach us and can offer the natural world in return.

It is a beautiful book which takes us through Wall Kimmerer’s life as a student, mum, teacher, scientist, gardener and lover of the natural world. She gently explores the stories of the plants she has grown up with – asters, goldenrod, strawberries, squash and sweetgrass. The core theme is how, through listening to these stories, we can develop more wholesome and reciprocal relationships with the natural world.

The idea of reciprocity really resonated with me. It’s such a simple sentiment – to be respectful and give as much as you take. Surely, it’s a concept that underpins any successful relationship?

An unbalanced relationship, where one party constantly takes, whilst the other is expected to continually yield and compromise seems doomed to failure. Resources need space to regrow – whatever form they take – energy, love, trust, trees, soil, water. Stocks need time to be replenished. There needs to be as much give as there is take. Without this balance, any relationship will be hard to sustain in the long term.

Nature brings me so much joy. Being able to go to the beach after work, run bare foot on the sand, swim in the ocean and get tumbled by the waves. Watching spring unfold slowly, slowly. Just this week, the leaves of the copper beech came out – starting pink and now in full bloom, a deep russet red. The little alpine strawberries starting to flower which always reminds me of my son as a toddler going out into the garden, pottering about and eating them straight from the plant. The bees collecting nectar from the pale yellow comfrey flowers. They always seem to fly in a slightly encumbered way with their big fluffy butts hanging down and their off-kilter, wobbly entrance to the flower, like a drunken pilot navigating a bumpy landing. The sparrows chirping and chattering and bickering from under the neighbour’s eaves.

And I wonder what I give back in return?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Perhaps you’ve read Braiding Sweetgrass and have your own favourite section or image? Or do you have any thoughts on the idea of respect and reciprocity in relationships?