Nature as Respite

and why Robin Wall Kimmerer says reciprocity is the answer to everything

Today, after the news of 18 children and one adult dead in Texas, after I sobbed and sang in my kitchen, thinking of all the small feet I have held in my hands as a nanny, after I forced myself to block social media on my phone and put on my socks and shoes and opened my umbrella, I went for a walk.

I didn’t want to go for a walk today.

I opened my umbrella and turned left, walking down my Wallingford block. Three blocks away is a cooperative preschool. How many schools are in Seattle; how many children? I walk past a middle school nearly every day, but today I am walking in the opposite direction.

I pass two houses, one blue and one with wood siding, and then the newer house built from metal with the raised garden where two worn tulips with variegated petals refuse to succumb to the passing of their season. Across the street is the giant lot filled with a concrete foundation, stacks of lumber and metal spikes poking out of concrete slabs, soon to be a row of apartments or condominiums. I recall Kathmandu, the layers of concrete and wood and the mishmash of metal wires they used to weave through and sustain their building. Here, the metal spikes are uniform, made for this specific purpose.

After the pre-condominiums are more condominiums, a while block that used to be one thing and is now another thing, and then Wallingford Avenue. Look south; there’s the Seattle skyline across Lake Union.

Today the sky is white. It’s the marine layer. As I walk, the rain stops. I close my umbrella. I take deep breaths, inhaling the richness of blossoming peonies and irises and larkspur and the leaves and grass and water. I can almost feel the delicate heels of children in my hands, hear the sound of my voice saying I’ll put this sock on and you can put the other one on. Making a deal. The softness of a child’s cheek under my fingers; how privileged we are to have children at all.

As I walked I listened to On Being. I’ve been listening to On Being for over ten years now. Krista Tippett and Robin Wall Kimmerer discuss the intelligence of plants. If you haven’t read Braiding Sweetgrass or Gathering Moss (both by Kimmerer), I highly recommend. I’ve written about Kimmerer before. I find refuge in her writing and speaking and thinking when I feel alone or bereft. It helps me remember: we are all here together. We being everything— an entire world of pain and plainness and quiet and heart-wrenching pain.

Kimmerer ponders: what pronouns do we use for our nature siblings? And in doing so she asks us to expand our idea of our place in the world, and release hierarchical frameworks.

As I walk I am constantly engaging with plants. The plants speak to me. The roses and poppies with their bright, undiluted petals. The Oregon willow branches hanging down, their leaves rippling in the wind, their serrated edges whistling (singing). I stop constantly, touching plants, placing my hands on tree trunks, and bending down to take pictures of flowers.

On bad days, when I feels disconnected from everything, I find the largest tree around and lean my entire body against it. We pulse together; connected. We are alive together. The tree is my elder and its knowledge is sophisticated and expansive.

The plants, with their colors and shapes and gestures and scents, speak to me. It’s not a spiritual thing. They don’t talk to me. They communicate with me.

They do not use words.

Their language is more sophisticated than ours.

Kimmerer asks, how do we refer to plants, other than using the word “it?” It, she says, feels disrespectful.

In Western thinking, “subject” — namely, humankind — is imbued with personhood, agency, and moral responsibility. But “object” — the ecosystem — is not, making the latter ripe for exploitation. As Kimmerer says, “As if the land existed only for our benefit.”¹

The pronoun…

…we use for our plant siblings (as I like to call them) creates a new pathway which curves around the limitations of language and expands our perception to swallow the whole world. Whole worlds, filled with plants and creatures, all with lives and purposes, all integrally connected and vital to our survival and health.

The pronoun? Ki (singular) and kin (plural). Though kin is also an English word, these pronouns she suggests are not English, but a Anishinaabe. The words are a gift, Kimmerer says, derived from the word “aki,” which means “earthly being.”

Oh, these beautiful earthly beings, supporting and surrounding us.

Recently I have been reading about how being in nature allows our minds and states of being to exist in ways that facilitate deeper awareness and presence. That the shapes of nature, curved and intricate, have a different effect on us than the shapes contained in cities, which are often severe, all sharp corners and straight lines. (think of the buildings you love the most)

I’ve been thinking about shapes, and how pleasurable it is to look at curving shapes, round shapes. Thinking about the complexity of kin, how layered and interdependent they are. We are.

I wonder: if we are having so much trouble seeing each other as equal, should we start with something smaller? This is how I practice metta, also called lovingkindness meditation. I start with a flower; a tree; my cat. The least complicated thing. I allow my love for the thing to fill my heart. And then I try humans, working my way from the ones I trust to the ones I don’t.

Once, after a I’d led a class in metta meditation, a student asked me: how can I love someone that has done terrible things? I don’t want to empower them in that way. I reminded them that loving someone does not mean agreeing with them, and loving someone is not equivalent to enabling them. We can love every single being on this planet, predators and prey, evil and good. Teaching ourselves to hold love for evil in our hearts does not increase the levels of evil in the world. It increases the amount of love in our hearts.

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Long long ago, back when I dated men, I hiked the Ventana Wilderness in Big Sur.

My boyfriend and I were with his cousin, looking for a treasure I won’t mention here. One day, after we’d set up camp, they went hiking. I hadn’t yet learned that I am someone who likes to move slowly and thrives in stillness, but I gave myself grace that day and stayed at the campsite alone. It was very early spring, and back then that meant it wasn’t fire season, so I started a small fire in the pit, which I kept going all day.

The sun’s light shone, unobstructed by clouds. I drew great pleasure from tracing its path across the sky, slowly. Of being a witness to that path. Of watching the shadows shift and change. The little spot was surrounded by redwoods, Big Sur being one of the southernmost places for redwoods.

I’d brought a book about chakras. Under the brilliant sun, the shadows of redwoods creating patterns on the dirt, pileated woodpeckers and stellar jays chattering, I meditated, and fed the fire. That crackling sound soothed me. The breeze was intermittent, another pattern. It smelled of the sea and dirt and manzanita. Planes flew overhead, following a flight path, another movement in the pattern.

My kin. Ki.

In the terror of our current circumstances, imagine that we can exist with reciprocity rather than inside the system of capitalism, which has driven us into a landscape where politicians let children be murdered. We cannot bring those children back to life. That is the terrible thing about death. It is so very final.

We must allow ourselves to imagine our way back to ourselves, and who we are meant to be. We cannot save ourselves when we are letting ourselves disappear.

But how can we take care of ourselves, and each other?

How exhausted are we, and how do we allow the world to exhaust us?

Nature heals us. And yet we’re so distracted by the things that are depleting us to let ourselves be healed. The news cycle and social media increase our fear, our isolation. There are no layers there. Our devices are made of dead material which depletes the earth. We’ve forgotten how intertwined we are. When we kill things, we die too. We all make choices. We have agency, and yet we throw up our hands. To accept our choices, both individual and as a whole, is deeply painful.

And yet, what is the alternative, when our current framework is so rigid? When so many of us are scraping by, on so many levels, materially, physically, spiritually, emotionally?

I am starting with allowing myself some space to exist. To breathe.

If you can, go outside. Maybe right now. Maybe later today. Go outside and listen to the birds and touch the plants and cry and let your feelings expand and know that your are held and you are not alone.

You are not alone.

1. https://medium.com/minneapolis-institute-of-art/respect-your-kin-2d22143b494e