“If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.” Braiding Sweetgrass focuses on a general theme of respect towards all things, not just humans, and how we’ve lost this basic principal with the manifestation of English and the market economy. The book discusses how it’s arrogant to only recognize something as worthy of respect if it is human. This is so deeply ingrained in how we live and are raised therefore it is so much easier to continue being this way.

I joined Zach on a planting expedition in White Clay on Thursday afternoon. Dusk was settling into the thick humidity of the forest as we listened to his various morsels of information, delving deeper down the path. About ten minutes in we passed a hickory, its roots exposed, grasping the earth against the edge of one of the hills making up the piedmont landscape. As one of the other students on the hike marveled at the resilience of the tree, pushing against the heavy force of gravity, Zach commented, “ Looks like he’s trying to get his feet in deep there.” The nonchalant way he commented on the hickory as if it were a man grabbed my attention and as we continued down the path I peered deep into the trees, trying to give animate life to each of the entities I saw. I thought of Robin Kimmerer writing about, “walking through a richly inhabited world of birch people, bear people, rock people,” and how every setting would indeed be more vibrant if it was considered this way. Using this school of thought lends a lot more emotion to every place I visit now. While walking down the green  I feel empathy for the trees, standing lonely amidst a human world, with only the occasional visit from a squirrel or bird. Would they be happier surrounded by a buzzing thicket, teeming with life? Or are they content to sink their roots into well cared for grounds and offer shade to college students.

I feel like the importance of recognizing everything in nature as persons worthy of concern is the first step in respecting them enough to view them as gifts. The concept of the gift economy can only be valued if you understand that each individual thing that you are giving deserves thought and care. Kimmerer talks about how her friend Wally uses abundant amounts of sweetgrass in fire keeping ceremonies and how some people will not donate it to him because they want money for it. She explains that it cannot be bought or sold or else it loses its value. As we explored the woods with Zach on Thursday we inquired about his gardening efforts and seed collection. One of my friends asked him how much the seeds cost and where he bought them but he insisted that in the seed collecting community everyone gives to each other, encouraging one another to grow a variety of things. This was reminiscent to me of the exchange of sweetgrass mentioned in the book.

Hand in hand with this goes the thought that “a gift’s value increases with each passage” and that we must, at some point, return the gift to the earth.  I felt this importance firsthand as Zach handed us each a bag of seeds, cucumber root, Solomon’s seal, and trillium and told us to plant them. Each of these little packets of DNA were gifts that had been stripped away from the area, traveled far away, only to circulate through the hands of many seed collectors ending up back in the earth that they belong to. The gratification of setting a native plant back into its home environment was enough, but hopefully we also encouraged the rotation of the ecosystem and in conjunction the revolution of gifts from the earth.