Braiding Sweetgrass

is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become natur ...

The Sound of Silverbells I’d never wanted to live in the South, but when my husband’s job took us there I duly learned the flora ...

landscape, maples in one place, and spruce in another.” This was a dance I was trying to get used to, teaching in the Bible Belt ...

time instructor teaching a few classes while I finished my dissertation. I’d left my baby girls at home with their dad in order ...

morning with clipboard in hand and lessons in mind. The range spread out above us in our valley campsite. The Smokies in early s ...

creating a mirror image of my internal checklist of things to see without much apparent interest. They asked for the spelling of ...

duplicate the Canadian climate. These islands of northern woods felt like home to me too, and in the fresh cold air I slipped th ...

philosophies and kinship with the other members of Creation, but they looked at me so quizzically that I stopped and then hasten ...

what it meant. We may as well have stayed home and read about the Smokies. In effect, against all my prejudices, I’d worn a whit ...

receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart. My job was just to lead them into the presence and ready them to hear. On tha ...

Sitting in a Circle Brad arrives at our wilderness field station for ethnobotany class in loafers and a polo shirt. I watch him ...

I try to reassure Brad that the woods are just about the safest place in the world. I confess that I experience the same unease ...

of human needs and take it beyond survival into the “higher” levels of art, companionship, and spirituality. This of course elic ...

considerations, there is cultural meaning to living within the teachings of a circle. I tell them that the doorway always faces ...

Eventually they all follow me and manage to exit their canoes without capsizing. We wade like herons through the marsh, minus th ...

problem is that you can’t tell whether the shoot will snap or not until you tug with all your might and it suddenly breaks free, ...

drops hers quickly to the ground. “Ooh, it’s all slimy,” she says, and starts to wipe her hands on her muddy pants, as if that w ...

them for ventilation. When the rains come, they swell and close the gap, making the mat waterproof. Cattails also make fine slee ...

mats, twine, and shelter. We have buckets of rhizomes for carbohydrate energy, stalks of pith for vegetables—what more could peo ...

the immature flowers as if the stalk were a skewer. The taste and texture are remarkably like an artichoke’s. Cattail kebabs for ...