Every splint wasted dishonors years of a tree’s life

Evidence

But John stops the class, his gentle voice gaining a hard edge. “You’ve missed the most important thing,” he says. “Look around you.” We look—at the forest, at the camp, at each other. “At the ground! ” he says. In a circle around each novice is a litter of scraps. “Stop and think what you’re holding. That ash tree was growing out there in that swamp for thirty years, putting out leaves, dropping them, putting out more. It got eaten by deer, hit by a freeze, but it kept working year in and year out, laying down those rings of wood. A splint fallen on the ground is a whole year of that tree’s life and you’re about to step on it, bend it, grind it into the dirt? That tree honored you with its life. There’s no shame in messing up a splint; you’re just learning. But whatever you do, you owe that tree respect and should never waste it.” And so he guides us as we sort through the debris we’ve made. Short strips go into a pile for small baskets and decoration. The miscellaneous bits and shavings get tossed into a box to be dried and used for tinder. John keeps to the tradition of the Honorable Harvest: take only what you need and use everything you take. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 514

Categorization

• XREF: The tree-as-teacher and Honorable Harvest motif connects to ch20-21 reciprocity and to the ‘listening to more-than-human voices’ thread of the polyad.
• SHARE: For the eco-justice pedagogy course cohort — this passage teaches waste ethics through embodied craft rather than abstract principle, a model for cultivating land relationship attention.