These practices often establish a mental barrier to a readers’ successful uptake of ideas. Concepts are made unattainable to the public by writers who immaturely exercise writing imbued with heady words and niche, highly abstract logic. I am often told that learning environmental concepts can be needlessly arduous. Further, with the threats of environmental degradation, climate change and biodiversity loss, Braiding Sweetgrass’ importance is paramount. Kimmerer’s apt and brave reflections on her ethnicity, livelihoods and lived experience in relation to the environment gives her an uncontested pen and intellectual foundation to work from. Kimmerer is unique in the fact that not only is she a member of the nation Potawatomi, but she is also a poet, a mother, and trained biologist. Robin Wall Kimmerer is one of these gifted contemporary writers of our time.

Such writers eloquently illustrate and address the challenges of the times. Each generation is only lucky enough to be gifted the timely work of a handful of contemporary writers. Relatively speaking, in cosmological time, expression through writing is a young practice.

In that spirit, this week’s blog is a book review of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Though this is an extreme case, with a potential harsh winter approaching it may be in our best interest to use this storm as a prompt to begin thinking of what we might do, as we will be inevitably house ridden. On top of the inclement weather, hurricane force winds have taken powerlines to the ground and with them internet service.

As I write this review, an aggressive storm has been raging adamantly through the night and now well into the day.

Braiding with sweetgrass