Listening to Land

A few weeks ago in a story circle I was asked to share a story of my ancestors and I was embarrassed that I felt stumped. I feel very connected to the family stories of relatives I know. But going back before my grandparents’ generation, what I have are anecdotes that may be true or may be lore, a few names, and at least six mostly European countries to draw upon. The stories I have do not quite feel like my own, and I have not yet made a point of learning more.

I have been listening to Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer which on one hand does not seem to be a book about endings or end-of-life. But on the other hand seems to offer a view into the benefits of knowing the stories of those (human and nonhuman) who came before us. In some ways it is a reminder that lives never really end, they just get carried forward knowingly or unknowingly in the land and the people and the ways of what comes next.

Kimmerer gently and beautifully makes a case for forming a reciprocal relationship with land. She speaks from the perspective of scientist and storyteller and daughter of mother earth. She reminds me that place, too, offers us ancestors. She writes, “This is really why I taught my daughters to garden–so they would have a mother to love them long after I am gone.”

I don’t garden yet, though I hold out hope for myself. I know gardening was a meditative and community practice for my own mom. Every year she invited the fourth and fifth grade classes at a nearby school to help plant and harvest food in her backyard. My mom responded to birds and flowers and squirrels with the same way she responded to toddlers, with respect and love and joy.

Kimmerer writes,

Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.

And I think, yes, this is what I saw in my mother.

Even without a garden, I relate to the way Kimmerer speaks of the relational aspects of place and how loving places can connect us to the stories of those who came before us.

When John and I bought the house we currently live in it had only been owned by the couple who built it. Their names, Beryl and Otto, were carved into a wood plaque on the front porch. Their grandkids’ heights are still penciled on the wall of the garage next to sketches of sharks and dolphins. Both Otto and Beryl lived in the house up until they died.

I feel connected to this couple I only know through handwriting on notes next to utilities, their charming choice of light fixtures, the giant trees they planted that shade the yard from afternoon sun. The house they built in 1981 is sturdy and sound. They planted apple and cherry and walnut trees that blossom in spring and one apricot that shows off during a bumper year, producing more fruit than our family, friends, neighbors or visiting deer can possible consume. I think of Beryl and Otto often. I feel a kinship in our shared caring for this place.

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When I would take writing workshops into K-12 classrooms through a non-profit arts program, I’d often share a poem by George Ella Lyon, Where I’m From as one of my no-fail writing prompts. It always brought forth student poems brimming with imagery that would make a parent or a teacher’s heart swell. This was true whether the writers were third graders from bright leafy neighborhoods or teenagers writing from the juvenile detention center or the kids living in migrant camps near the orchards along the Snake River corridor.

Kids would name the tree outside their bedroom, the tamales their auntie made, the butte shaped like a lizard sleeping against the horizon near home. They would name the the things their father always said, their own Imogenes and Alafairs, their grandparents’ scars. They were connecting to ancestors—human and nonhuman—with words.

Beyond my literal home, too, I have found this sense of belonging particularly in places where story is still present in the curve of the land. I feel it in the cave walls of wild river canyons, or walking through forgotten cemeteries, or coming upon an ancient dwelling in the cliffs of Southern Utah. It is not a blood connection that I have to the people or animals or stones. But maybe what Kimmerer names as kinship with the people who worked and walked and died before me. It is not an intellectual knowing; the earth hums.

Kimmerer’s philosophy on reciprocity and gratitude has brought to mind the custom that is gaining momentum of opening events by first naming the indigenous land on which they are held. It has made me think, maybe it goes beyond being a gesture of correction and respect. Maybe it is also an offering. A way for many of us to begin finding an entry point to a fuller story of where we are from.

I have not always leaned into the hard stories of the places I’ve lived. America has so much to grieve, to atone for, to heal. Sometimes I think, it is too much. Like a pandemic, like Alzheimer’s, like death. But that is my ego talking. That is fear and denial. Besides, Kimmerer’s writing reminds me, the stories of our past shape us with or without our knowledge or consent.

I have learned this from my own personal history over and over again, why would it not be true of our collective story as well? I have also learned that when I finally do open, I am never sorry.

Wendell Berry’s famous lines from How to Be a Poet have always rung true for me:

There are no unsacred places;

There are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

Now I think, though, that maybe all places are both. Humans inhabit this earth sometimes by force and sometimes by carelessness and sometimes by heart. I want more heart.

More Resources

I’ve begun talking about this time as my accidental sabbatical as I’ve been spending a lot reading! The books below are ones that have given me a fuller view of where I am from. Some of them I have mentioned in earlier posts as well.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson

Stamped from the Beginning: A Definitive Guide to Racist Ideas in America, Ibram X. Kendri.

An American Sunrise: Poems, Joy Harjo

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

A Little Bit of Wisdom: Conversations with a Nez Perce Elder, by Horace Axtell with Margo Aragon

Next week I will share what I learned from the surveys. Thank you so very much for the thought and heart you put into those! I’m very excited. Feel free to continue to send feedback to laura@laurastavoe.com in the meantime, or anytime.

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