Wood Chips
From the shores of Lake Superior (The Third Coast)
Up here in rural Michigan, or so it seems, we have a little more time and room to gradually absorb what is happening across the country with the spread of this particular coronavirus. There’s a good reason for that. New York City has 28,000 people per square mile, the Upper Peninsula, less than 20. Marquette County has a density of 31 persons per square mile, for Keweenaw County it’s 4 persons. Sooner or later, the virus will arrive with its fury and force. We need to prepare, physically, but also mentally and emotionally.
The storm will pass. But there’s also a chance, because of the scale of the damage left behind, that things will not go back to normal. Especially economically and politically. Values may change. The wide gap between the rich and the poor may be exposed, a new way of reordering our capitalistic, consumer way of life be revised.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, in an opening chapter of “Braiding Sweetgrass” (2013), intriguingly addresses her heritage as a Native American and life as a botanist and academic. She reflects about returning to a slower, more ceremonial way of living, one that invites us into a new harmony with the planet.
“The commodity economy has been here on Turtle Island (North America) for four hundred years … eating up everything,” she writes. “But people have grown weary of the sour taste in their mouths. A great longing is upon us, to live again in a world made of gifts. I can scent it coming, like the fragrance of ripening wild strawberries rising on the breeze.”
Jon
The Cedar Tree Institute
“Wood Chips” is a series of brief reflections written by Jon Magnuson, Director of the Cedar Tree Institute.
