Loving the land acts on the world, not merely in the heart

Evidence

It is an odd dichotomy we have set for ourselves, between loving people and loving land. We know that loving a person has agency and power—we know it can change everything. Yet we act as if loving the land is an internal affair that has no energy outside the confines of our head and heart. On the high prairie at Cascade Head another truth is revealed, the active force of love for land is made visible. Here the ritual burning of the headland cemented the people’s connection to salmon, to each other, and to the spirit world, but it also created biodiversity. The ceremonial fires converted forests to fingers of seaside prairie, islands of open habitat in a matrix of fog-dark trees. Burning created the headland meadows that are home to fire-dependent species that occur nowhere else on earth. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 904

Categorization

• XREF: �connects to ch2/ch29 themes of love-for-land as transformative; braids the eco-justice course thread on affective bonds to place versus settler extractive distance. — connects to: Resisting capitalism requires a subjective revolution toward love and unity with nature — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 499; A woman can claim wild land by love and memory — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 124
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports ‘Grafting & Growth’ argument that trees/land are underused as living infrastructure and that ritual care materially shapes landscape.

Broader Connections

• Resisting capitalism requires a subjective revolution toward love and unity with nature #corroborates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 499