Falling into place

The leaves of Lang courtyard maples started turning color over the weekend, as the ash leaves we'd laid out around the holes where three maples had been taken out faded to yellow, our looping patterns blown away. In class I asked the students to describe what we'd done to those who hadn't been able to attend, and then asked those to describe what it sounded like to them. To one, we'd built a 

shrine. Other students added acts of worship or remembrance, honoring the root systems, actions (as in action art or mutual aid actions), natural growth; for one it felt "cyclical," the ash tree offering "payment" for having contributed to the dying of the maples beneath. We all agreed it had been very special. 

I emphasized that it had been spontaneous but it didn't come from nowhere. Robin Wall Kimmerer, whose Braiding Sweetgrass we started today, describes the Original Instructions as "an orientation, not a map." We went down to the courtyard last week ready to respond. 

But: what happens next time? There are at least seven more dead trees down there right now. We know they will be taken out. Class wanted to be there to respond when that time comes, but didn't want to prescribe our response, rather letting that moment, too, inspire us. Well and good: no religion of the courtyard trees just yet! But, I pressed, why wait until they're removed? Someone expressed a desire to offer a kind of "hospice" care once we knew they were going to be taken away. But why wait until they're dead at all? Why not celebrate a life while it's still shared? We'll see if these seeds take root ...

Fortuitously, Kimmerer was the assigned reading for today, and, after realizing that her "plant teachers" were not a metaphor but a relationship with arboreal people, we turned to the story with which the book begins, articulating the Original Instructions, "Skywoman Falling." While some tellings of this story tell us who this falling woman was and when and from where she fell, Braiding Sweetgrass begins with no backtory, the woman in free fall from a hole suddenly opened in the sky, as witnessed by other animals below, who come together to catch her, and wind up, with her, creating Turtle Island. It's something none of them had planned or even known could be, but all knew what to do, geese geesing, turtles turtling, muskrats muskratting, I proposed, alluding to the "grammar of animacy" of Kimmerer's Potawatomi language, 70% of whose words are verbs. And humans humaning - which means? Dancing, expressing gratitude that this world, which could not have been - one student said it seemed "almost accidental," to which I added gratuitous - continues to be created by all the peoples of our world.

It seemed only slightly heavy-handed to suggest a parallel between the accidental creation of Turtle Island and the way things fell into place in our unplanned shrine for the maples last week. How do we make this more than a one-off? 

The drawings above are of "Skywoman falling with a bundle in her hand." The student whose image is in the center made the connection with last week's ritual clear.