What we owe the mud

Robin Wall Kimmerer opens her bestselling essay collection “Braiding Sweetgrass” with the story of Skywoman falling.

“In the beginning,” Kimmerer writes, “there was Skyworld.”

But Skyworld has a hole, and Skywoman – maybe she slips, or she’s pushed, or perhaps “with full agency, she spreads her arms, looks over her shoulder, feels her child stir within,” and jumps through it.

Down the shaft of light she falls, but just before she lands into the dark water world below, helpful geese catch her and discuss with the other animals what to do next.

“Loons, otters, swans, beavers, fish of all kinds” gather round.

A turtle arrives, Skywoman steps down onto the shell, and the animals tell tales of the possibility that there may be mud down below, if they could just get to it.

They each dive down without success, returning empty handed and gasping for air, until only the tiny muskrat, weakest diver of all, was the last remaining to try.

“They waited and waited for him to return, fearing the worst for their relative, and, before long, a stream of bubbles rose with the small, limp body of the muskrat. He had given his life to aid this helpless human.”

But they notice something in his tightly-clenched paw: a small handful of mud.

I mention Kimmerer’s retelling of Skywoman and how she received these gifts from the animals – especially mud – and reinvested them to help build the new world they called Turtle Island, because every year, after our long winter, we get to enter this time called Mud Season.

It’s one of my favorite seasons, and every year I start a series that looks at Mud Season through scientific, artistic, and cultural lenses: Last year, I visited the Cary Institute of Ecoystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, to learn about soil ecosystems and mud in general through the work of Dr. Jane Lucas.

And last week, I returned to the Cary Institute, because they hosted Robin as she presented about ways to think about the gifts we've been given from the earth, and what we owe in return.

“Carol Crowe, an Algonquin biologist, shared with me the story of going to her tribal council and asking for a little travel grant to go to a sustainability meeting. And the elders in the room said, ‘Well, what is that? What's sustainability?’

“And she kind of laughed, too. And she said, ‘Well, that's how our people have lived well in place since time immemorial. But she also gave them these definitions that you're all familiar with.’

“Then she said that her tribal leaders were kind of scowling and she said, ‘They're going to turn down my request.’ But they didn't. They said, ‘You go to that meeting and you carry a message about sustainability. That sounds to me like they're just trying to find a way to keep on taking.’

“And when you look at those definitions, that's exactly what it is. They said, ‘You go tell those sustainability scientists and policy makers that when our feet hit the ground in the morning, we should be asking, what can we give? Not, what can we take?’”

After Robin’s presentation, I asked Joshua Ginsberg, the president of the Cary Institute with a Ph.D. in biology, how he received what Robin said,  if it reframes the way he thinks about his work and the work of the Cary Institute.

“ I think one of the things that is interesting about ecosystem science is that it has always been complicated in the way that it looks at the world,” Ginsberg said. “It tends to break stovepipes, not create them. And so I think this is another way of looking at the world.”

He said, “I think what is most special about Robin's work is she is a Ph.D. scientist who understands the language and the structures of western science and is able to integrate that and enrich it with different perspectives and ideas. New ways of looking at the world. Overall, I think it's valuable for almost any human endeavor.”

In this issue: It’s a scene report from the opening days of Mud Season.