Quotes from Robin Wall Kimmerer

Restoration is imperative for healing the earth, but reciprocity is imperative for long-lasting, successful restoration. Like other mindful practices, ecological restoration can be viewed as an act of reciprocity in which humans exercise their caregiving responsibility for the ecosystems that sustain them.

The genus Dicranum has undergone considerable adaptive radiation, that is, the evolution of many new species from a common ancestor

The young and the old are linked in one long breath, an inhalation that calls for reciprocal exhalation, nourishing the common root from which they both arose. New leaf to old, old to new, mother to daughter—mutuality endures. I am consoled by the lesson of lilies.

Adaptive radiation, whether in Darwin's finches or in Dicranum, creates new species that are well adapted for specific ecological niches.

I worry who will get to the crossroads first, who will make the choices for us all.

It is no surprise then that environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings.

The same specialization has taken place in Dicranum. By sidestepping competition, numerous species can coexist, each in a habitat that they don't have to share with a sibling species, the mosses' equivalent of "A Room of One's Own.

If people only knew . . . then they would, what? Stop? I honor their faith in people, but so far the if-then formula isn't working. People do know the consequences of our collective damage, they do know the wages of an extractive economy, but they don't stop.

Imagine if a developer, eying open land for a shopping mall, had to ask the goldenrod, the meadowlarks, and the monarch butterflies for permission to take their homeland. What if he had to abide by the answer? Why not?

It's not just the words that will be lost," she says. "The language is the heart of our culture; it holds our thoughts, our way of seeing the world. It's too beautiful for English to explain." Puhpowee.

Every one of them is beautiful. Every one of them is different and yet every one of them began in the same tree. They are all made of the same stuff and yet each is itself. That's the way it is with our people, too, all made of the same thing and each their own kind of beautiful.

These woods are second or third growth and sadly lost their leeks long ago. It turns out that when forests around here grow back after agricultural clearing, the trees come back readily but the understory plants do not.

start the day properly, with birdsong and shoes soaked in dew and the clouds still pink with sunrise over the barn, a down payment on a debt of gratitude.

A gift is different from something you buy, possessed of meaning outside its material boundaries. You never dishonor the gift. A gift asks something of you. To take care of it. And something more. I

One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven. And then they met—the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve—and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories.

with a bond physical, emotional, and spiritual.

We may forget the teacher, but our language remembers: our word for the giveaway, minidewak, means "they give from the heart.

The gifts of the earth are to be shared, but gifts are not limitless. The generosity of the earth is not an invitation to take it all. Every bowl has a bottom. When it's empty, it's empty.

That is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value increases with their passage. The fields made a gift of berries to us and we made a gift of them to our father. The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes. This is hard to grasp for societies steeped in notions of private property, where others are, by definition, excluded from sharing.

Individuality is cherished and nurtured

One day, after I'm a daffodil, I will be able to photosynthesize. It's something to look forward to.

when three hundred voices all joined together, all those voices, in measured cadence, from the gray-haired school nurse's to the kindergarteners', made me feel part of something. It was as if for a moment our minds were one.

in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others.

made me feel part of something. It was as if for a moment our minds were one.