# Quote — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

> Hold out your hands and let me lay upon them a sheaf of freshly picked sweetgrass, loose and flowing, like newly washed hair. Golden green and glossy above, the stems are banded with purple and white where they meet the ground. Hold the bundle up to your nose. Find the fragrance of honeyed vanilla over the scent of river water and black earth and you understand its scientific name: Hierochloe odorata, meaning the fragrant, holy grass. In our language it is called wiingaashk, the sweet-smelling hair of Mother Earth. Breathe it in and you start to remember things you didn’t know you’d forgotten.

- Author: [Robin Wall Kimmerer](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer.md)
- Book: [Braiding Sweetgrass](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robin_Wall_Kimmerer#Braiding_Sweetgrass_(2013)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/hold-out-your

## More from this book

> 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.

p. 359 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/the-world-is-more.md)

> 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.

p. 358 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/it-has-been.md)

> Naturalists live in a world of wounds that only they can see.

p. 357 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/naturalists-live-in-a-world.md)