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“Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are... One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.
And then they met - the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve - and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories. They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I can only imagine the conversation between Eve and Skywoman: 'Sister, you got the short end of the stick...”
― Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
And then they met - the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve - and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories. They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I can only imagine the conversation between Eve and Skywoman: 'Sister, you got the short end of the stick...”
― Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
“Sure, I've worried that this will be yet another year in which I'll somehow convince myself, as in every other year, every other relationship, that whatever I see in him must be a mirage - a projection of my own thirst. I worry that this will be as bad as selling off land to oil companies, and offering up land to recreationists who think they are in love with the idea of wilderness, of preservation, but really have the worst carbon footprint of all. I worry there will be toxic waste. I worry that the prehistory - the way I was before these casualties - will be erased, and I'll never claim the whole human I once was.
This is the grand illusion. That we were once whole. That our ecosystems were intact, self-sustaining. That everything we need is within - and to need others is as vampiric as drilling for every last drop of oil.
If this is why we seek solitude, we are in danger of extinction.”
― Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness
This is the grand illusion. That we were once whole. That our ecosystems were intact, self-sustaining. That everything we need is within - and to need others is as vampiric as drilling for every last drop of oil.
If this is why we seek solitude, we are in danger of extinction.”
― Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness
“Is it a sin against God to be poor? ... The adults say things will get better, but they never have. How will God - my father's God - behave toward us when we're poor?
...
Maybe God is a kind of big kid, playing with his toys. If he is, what difference does it make if 700 people get killed in a hurricane - or if seven kids go to church and get dipped in a big tank of expensive water?
But what if all that is wrong? What if God is something else altogether?”
― Parable of the Sower
...
Maybe God is a kind of big kid, playing with his toys. If he is, what difference does it make if 700 people get killed in a hurricane - or if seven kids go to church and get dipped in a big tank of expensive water?
But what if all that is wrong? What if God is something else altogether?”
― Parable of the Sower
“But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does.”
― Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
― Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
“These good white liberals want monuments and wilderness to protect the places they recreate, to keep out companies that want to suck the fossil fuels out from under the sandstone. But the oil and gas will be burned by and large by them, to travel to Utah’s public lands. And it’s used by us - you in your big red Cadillac and me in my Toyota truck - although I’ve recently downgraded to a more fuel-efficient Subaru, the preferred method of transport that’s most often frosted with bike, ski, and boat racks for outdoor enthusiasts across the nation.
The land and those who live off it know this arrangement breeds no symbiosis. We all want to get to, and get off on, a body corralled and commodified. Our orgasmic need for release and relief eclipses the fact this is the living, breathing body of the Beloved - the naked desert that has demarcated and delineated - ribbed, we believe, for our pleasure.”
― Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness
The land and those who live off it know this arrangement breeds no symbiosis. We all want to get to, and get off on, a body corralled and commodified. Our orgasmic need for release and relief eclipses the fact this is the living, breathing body of the Beloved - the naked desert that has demarcated and delineated - ribbed, we believe, for our pleasure.”
― Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness
Kate’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Kate’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,621 books
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49 friends
547 books
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8 friends
2,401 books
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106 friends
79 books
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3 friends
200 books
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19 friends
34 books
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4 friends
46 books
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4 friends
88 books
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12 friends
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