I recently ordered the two books by Robin Wall Kimmerer that I have not yet read, Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults. I had not known about the latter book, which she cowrote with Monique Gray Smith (illustrated by Nicole Neidhardt) until about a week ago when I started digging more deeply online into the wisdom of Kimmerer. The fact that she’s adapted her masterpiece, Braiding Sweetgrass into a manual on reciprocity for young adults has me particularly excited because the sanctuary I am working to create will have a focus on facilitating a connection between the natural world and youth.
Every time I listen to, or read, the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer I become the rapt student. Life distills into essence through her narratives and a feeling of coming home overwhelms my senses. More often than not, I find myself weeping. And here is why: Even though our modernized world tries to rush us towards unfettered “progress,” our cells are continually pulling us back to their origins. They beg us to become rooted into our collective Mother. They plead with us to come home. There is an undeniable longing that awakens when we (re)learn our origin stories, and no one conveys them more eloquently than Kimmerer.
She is master storyteller. Kimmerer’s gift for weaving indigenous and scientific wisdom into compelling narratives draws the listener/reader in so deeply everything else disappears. Her words tug at the threads of DNA that join the solitary life into the web of all lives. One cannot help but feel the longing for reconnection. I am not holding onto an illusion that I can do it perfectly, but if I can nurture a space where the natural world exists in harmony with its human visitors—who are, after all, children of the land—in a way that threads reciprocity into one small piece of our world perhaps a bit of this longing will turn into joy.
The Light Behind the Story 