Quotes About Nature

Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

Don't buy it." Refusal to participate is a moral choice. Water is a gift for all, not meant to be bought and sold. Don't buy it. When food has been wrenched from the earth, depleting the soil and poisoning our relatives in the name of higher yields, don't buy it.

Linked by sweetgrass, there is reciprocity between you, linked by sweetgrass, the holder as vital as the braider.

So I offer, in its place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world.

When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into "natural resources." If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.

It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a "species loneliness"—estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night.

We need to unearth the old stories that live in a place and begin to create new ones, for we are storymakers, not just storytellers.

They weave a web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy—all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.

the chain of reciprocity. Living by the precepts of the Honorable Harvest—to take only what is given, to use it well, to be grateful for the gift, and to reciprocate the gift

A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa—to be a bay—releases the water from bondage and lets it live.

As it grew closer, they could see that it was a woman arms outstretched, long black hair billowing behind as she spiralled toward them.

Cautionary stories of the consequences of taking too much are ubiquitous in Native cultures, but it's hard to recall a single one in English. Perhaps this helps to explain why we seem to be caught in a trap of overconsumption, which is as destructive to ourselves as to those we consume.

If you didn't know better, you might not recognize raindrops and rivers as kin, so different are the particular and the collective.

But the world has a way of guiding your steps

The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don't yet know. But what we see is the power of unity.

Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers

If you don't give it respect it will leave us

Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.

Gardens are simultaneously a material and a spiritual undertaking. That's hard for scientists, brainwashed by Cartesian dualism, to grasp.

finding a patch of wild strawberries still touches me with a sensation of surprise, a feeling of unworthiness and gratitude for the generosity and kindness that comes with an unexpected gift all wrapped in red and green.

As the temperature drops, single voices—clear and hollow—replace the keening chorus: the ancient speech of frogs. One word becomes clear, as if spoken in English. "Hear! Hear! Hear! The world is more than your thoughtless commute. We, the collateral, are your wealth, your teachers, your security, your family . Your strange hunger for ease should not mean a death sentence for the rest of Creation.

We have constructed an artifice, a Potemkin village of an ecosystem where we perpetrate the illusion that the things we consume have just fallen off the back of Santa's sleigh, not been ripped from the earth. The illusion enables us to imagine that the only choices we have are between brands.

The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.

A harvest is made honorable when it sustains the giver as well as the taker.