Observing other species’ lives can recover a forgotten common language

Evidence

Our stories from the oldest days tell about the time when all beings shared a common language—thrushes, trees, mosses, and humans. But that language has been long forgotten. So we learn each other’s stories by looking, by watching each other’s way of living. I want to tell the mosses’ story, since their voices are little heard and we have much to learn from them. They have messages of consequence that need to be heard, the perspectives of species other than our own. The scientist within me wants to know about the life of mosses and science offers one powerful way to tell their story. But it’s not enough. The story is also about relationship. We’ve spent a long time knowing each other, mosses and I. In telling their story, I’ve come to see the world through moss-colored glasses. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 36

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Learning each other’s stories by looking, by watching each other’s way of living’ is exactly the interpretive method of Reading the Landscape and links to the Soundscape course’s listening method. — connects to: Kimmerer frames annual spring breeding as one shared sacred longing across species — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 135; Plants communicate knowledge through embodied action rather than verbal language — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 450; Experiments can be a respectful way of listening to other species. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 922 (+3 more)
• SEED: The idea that species have ‘voices little heard’ and ‘messages of consequence’ is a ready frame for interpretive writing about any overlooked organism.

Broader Connections

• Deep attention fuses species identity into its habitat context #expands (0.85) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 524
• Species-level collective experiences of identity loss are as real as individual life-history crises #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2428
• Sustained attention reveals that species vary across geographic space #expands (0.72)