pattan’s Reviews > Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants > Status Update

“It came to me once again that restoring a habitat, no matter how well intentioned, produces casualties. We set ourselves up as arbiters of what is good when often our standards of goodness are driven by narrow interests, by what we want. I piled the cut brush back up near the nest in some semblance of the protective cover I had destroyed and sat on a rock, concealed on the other side of the pond, to see if she would come back. What did she think as she watched me come closer and closer, laying waste to the home she had carefully chosen, threatening her family? There are powerful forces of destruction loose in the world, advancing inexorably toward her children and mine. The onslaught of progress, well- intentioned to improve human habitat, threatens the nest I’ve chosen for my children as surely as I threatened hers. What does a good mother do?”