Robin Wall Kimmerer

Quotes

1. Swimming was banned in 1940. Beautiful Onondaga Lake. People spoke of it with pride. Now they barely speak of it at all, as if it were a family member whose demise was so shameful that the name never comes up.

   p. 317

2. 

   All powers have two sides, the power to create and the power to destroy. We must recognize them both, but invest our gifts on the side of creation.

   p. 212

3. 

   Plants are the first restoration ecologists. They are using their gifts for healing the land, showing us the way.

   p. 332

4. 

   The marvel of a basket is in its transformation, its journey from wholeness as a living plant to fragmented strands and back to wholeness again as a basket. A basket knows the dual powers of destruction and creation that shape the world. Strands once separated are rewoven into a new whole. The journey of a basket is also the journey of a people.

   p. 257

5. 

   This is what we field biologists live for: the chance to be outside in the vital presence of other species, who are generally way more interesting than we are. We get to sit at their feet and listen.

   p. 251

6. 

   When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which to see the world.

   p. 258

7. 

   The earth is so richly endowed that the least we can do in return is to pay attention.

   p. 217

8. 

   The composer Aaron Copland got it right. An n spring is music for dancing. The woods dance with the colors of wildflowers, nodding sprays of white dogwood and the pink froth of redbuds, rushing streams and the embroidered solemnity of dark mountains.

   p. 218

9. 

   A place becomes a home when it sustains you, when it feeds you in body as well as spirit.

   p. 259

10. 

    The fish that survive, you may not eat. Fishing was banned in 1970 due to high concentrations of mercury. It is estimated that one hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds of mercury were discharged into Onondaga Lake between 1946 and 1970. Allied Chemical used the mercury cell process to produce industrial chlorine from the native salt brines. The mercury waste, which we know to be extremely toxic, was handled freely on its way to disposal in the lake. Local people recall that a kid could make good pocket money on "reclaimed" mercury. One old-timer told me that you could go out to the waste beds with a kitchen spoon and pick up the small glistening spheres of mercury that lay on the ground. A kid could fill an old canning jar with mercury and sell it back to the company for the price of a movie ticket. Inputs of mercury were sharply curtailed in the 1970s, but the mercury remains trapped in the sediments where, when methylated, it can circulate through the aquatic food chain. It is estimated that seven million cubic yards of lake sediments are today contaminated with mercury.

    p. 316

11. 

    A teacher comes, they say, when you are ready. And if you ignore its presence, it will speak to you more loudly. But you have to be quiet to hear.

    p. 222

12. 

    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.

    p. 222