Quotes from Robin Wall Kimmerer

Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires.

I came to know that it wasn't naming the source of wonder that mattered, it was wonder itself

As the scholar and writer Lewis Hyde notes, "It is the cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people." Wild strawberries fit the definition of gift, but grocery store berries do not. It's the relationship between producer and consumer that changes everything.

We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named, it is not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way. And now our minds are one.

We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn - we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They've been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out. They live both above and below ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then give it away.

Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment.

Strawberries first shaped my view of a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet. A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery - as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.

As unpredictable as life may be, we have even less control over the stories they tell about us after we're gone.

My natural inclination was to see relationships, to seek the treads that connect the world, to join instead of divide. But science is rigorous in separating the observer from the observed, and the observed from the observer.

but there's fire you must tend to every day. The hardest one to take care of is the one right here," he says, tapping his finger against his chest. "Your own fire, your spirit. We all carry a piece of that sacred fire within us. We have to honor it and care for it. You are the firekeeper.

Following the path of science trained me to separate, to distinguish perception from physical reality, to atomize complexity into its smallest components, to honor the chain of evidence and logic, to discern one thing from another, to savor the pleasure of precision.

What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it's hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts.

In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness

My questions were bigger than science could touch.

Gratitude doesn't send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity

When I stare too long at the world with science eyes, I see an afterimage of traditional knowledge. Might science and traditional knowledge be purple and yellow to one another, might they be goldenrod and asters? We see the world more fully when we use both.

thank all the birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave them the gift of beautiful songs. Each morning they greet the day and with their songs remind us to enjoy and appreciate life.

leadership is rooted not in power and authority, but in service and wisdom.

People loved the salmon the way fire loves grass and the blaze loves the darkness of the sea.

If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking "What is our responsibility?" is the same as asking "What is our gift?

Each of us comes from people who were once indigenous. We can reclaim our membership in the cultures of gratitude that formed our old relationships with the living earth.

There was a time when I teetered precariously with an awkward foot in each of two worlds - the scientific and the Indigenous. But then I learned to fly. Or at least try. It was the bees that showed me how to move between different flowers - to drink the nectar and gather pollen from both. It is this dance of cross-pollination that can produce a new species of knowledge, a new way of being in the world. After all, there aren't two worlds, there is just this one good green earth.

It is said that only humans have the capacity for gratitude. This is among our gifts.