Green Tribe of Belonging

9 degrees this morning, with a light dusting of new snow on the ground, the coldest we've had so far on this day before Christmas. Our longest night was three days ago, and folks at Prairie Hill celebrated with a fire out in the chill air, imagining with gratitude the days slowly beginning to lengthen.  More light. I know that plants are much more aware of the cycles of earth than we humans are, and the subtleties of weather. And since they have no houses to go into when the temperatures plummet, their lives depend upon preparing for winter if they are to survive into the new year. It seems miraculous that plants can actually live through months of sub-freezing temperatures, waiting underground for spring to come. The ground we can see now in December, the dead-looking surface, looks pretty hopeless, bereft of small plant life. And as the winter goes on, the ground underneath the surface freezes too. How can those small remnants of plants from last season survive to live again when...

 When I decided I needed to write about plants, and then chose to do it on a blog, I had a tough time figuring out what the blog should be called. I liked the word "tribe" and imagined a scene where I was admitted by the plant kingdom as an honorary member of their tribe. A little far-fetched, but it was a start. And "green" seemed the obvious modifier. But what else? It was another ah-ha inspiration in Friends Meeting that gave me the word "belonging", and I waited a couple days before I made the final decision to use it. It didn't seem to have anything to do with plants. So why was this word coming up so strongly in my mind? Maybe because when I am out in nature and sitting among plants, I feel that I belong? Maybe because there's a whole world of places where we all belong? This morning, though, I realize that the word belonging has a much deeper meaning. It has to do with how all of us... plants, animals, rocks, wind... are tied to each other i...

I think of my awakening to the plant world as something that didn't happen until I was a young adult. Though I don't remember being very aware of the plant kingdom, I was fortunate to be growing up on a large Iowa farm with fields and woods and hay barns to play in. I roamed the pastures with my cousin John, rafted down the Wapsinonoc Creek at the bottom of our hill, and spent many hours each day outside. John was a year older than me, and probably it was mostly John who built the platform for us in a huge tree right above the creek. From our treehouse, we tied a bag swing to one of the branches hanging over the water, and it was thrilling and a little scary to jump on the bag and swing out into the high air and look down at the creek. We also went fishing from the creek bank and sometimes brought the catch home to our mothers (who were not particularly excited to have a small fish to cook). John and I even went out to the middle of a corn field, picked the still-tiny ears of c...

 I remember when Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird wrote the book The Secret Life of Plants  decades ago. It was revolutionary. I read it with excitement. Yes, I thought! This is the aspect of plants that we've been missing! The authors were able to hook plants up to polygragh gadgets and measure their response to different events. One plant always knew when it's caretaker left work and began to ride home. Another plant reacted immediately with what looked like panic to the suggestion that it be burned. The book documented something that we humans had often sensed, but which did not fit into our worldview: there is consciousness in the natural world. How would this change our perception of our planet? How might it make us more cooperative, more respectful of non-human residents? Certainly my own view of my plant friends changed after reading this book. I began to relate to them as if there were a two-way communication link. I talked to them. I congratulated them for their gr...

 As I look out my south window during the isolated days of this pandemic, the green world outside keeps me sane and inspired. Although our whole tribe of humans is suffering from a sweeping scourge of sickness, our plant relatives look much as usual. For that I am grateful. I remember hearing a Native American story about the beginnings of life on this planet. First there were our rock ancestors, and  then there was water grinding the rock into small fragments. And then came the plant ancestors, the green tribe that would transform our future home into a vital living space for the millions of life forms that followed. Today our globe is covered with a breathtaking assortment of plants, from the microscopic to the giants. And although we humans are short-sighted enough to be threatening the health of this living planet, there is still time to change our ways and our awareness. And especially there is time to form a deep bond with the green tribe of plant life. Since my early tw...