2025 Year-Long Read: Braiding Sweetgrass

At the beginning of 2025, we announced that our year-long read would be Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This book transformed our lives years ago, and we wanted to share its message with anyone who crossed our path.

To be in relationship with the natural world is a pathway toward healing, both for ourselves and for the ecosystems that sustain us. When we begin to understand that trees, animals, and even rocks are beings in their own right, we learn to respect them not as resources, but as relatives.

Animals have walked this Earth far longer than humans, and we have relied on them for our survival since the beginning of our story. Now, many species rely on us. We carry a responsibility to protect life beyond our own and to help the natural world not only survive, but thrive.

Throughout Braiding Sweetgrass, stories from plants and animals reveal what mutual reciprocity between humans and nature can look like. The book reminds us that humans are not inherently destructive, but that destruction is a choice, just as care and reverence are choices.

Everything we do impacts another being. Each action carries the potential for harm or for healing.

Braiding Sweetgrass teaches us that stewardship is rooted not in guilt, but in gratitude. When we approach the natural world with humility and attention, care becomes instinctive rather than obligatory. The book invites us to listen to the land beneath our feet and to the cycles of the seasons. As we move through the next year together, may these teachings continue to guide how we show up for the places and species we love.