Eating maple makes maple carbon part of human bodies, joining species

Evidence

Drinking maple syrup gives you quite a sugar rush. This too is what it means to be a citizen of Maple Nation, having maple in your bloodstream, maple in your bones. We are what we eat, and with every golden spoonful maple carbon becomes human carbon. Our traditional thinking had it right: maples are people, people are maples. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 610

Categorization

• XREF: Closes the book on ch14’s sap-as-nursing and ch29’s mutual domestication — humans and plants literally become each other through eating. — connects to: Tasting maple sap directly evokes the experience of being nursed by the earth — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 221
• ADDENDUM: Supports the trees-as-infrastructure piece’s thesis that tree-human relationship is physiological, not just metaphorical.
• CANDY: Maples literally become people, people literally become maple — a lovely science-poetry blur for dinner conversation.