Exploring the Mycoverse Presents: Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass (Part 1 of 3)

Arlington Garden is excited to host Exploring the Mycoverse which is a “fungi-focused community education group exploring the many ways fungi can teach us about the inextricable interconnectedness of all life. The group meets to discuss fungi media such as texts, books, articles, films, and podcasts.” In the group's upcoming reading group, participants will discuss Braiding Sweetgrass by Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer. "For two years straight, Braiding Sweetgrass has been on the NYT nonfiction bestseller's list and for good reason. Braiding Sweetgrass offers how we can learn from non-humans and ecosystems as an interconnected whole. As fungi curious folks, this book offers us a framework based gratitude for mindful foraging and caring for fungi. In our first discussion of Braiding Sweetgrass, we will be discussing the first two parts of the book, Planting Sweetgrass and Tending Sweetgrass, pages i-116. Further discussions will take place later in March and April to discuss the rest of the book. Discussion will particularly be focused on the chapters, Learning the Grammar of Animacy and Allegiance to Gratitude. It'll be exciting to finally discuss this animacy section, as we previously read in Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life about how using the language of animacy with fungi could help us better further understand how they work." Space is limited and free registration is required here.  From the publisher: "As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return." Purchase from the publisher here.