Bare Palette

This book came into my reading list by whim. Never read non-fiction on plants before. It was a top pick in a Barnes and Noble email newsletter. The poetry in the title drew me and true to the title, it turned out to be the most beautifully written non-fiction book I have read. So rich in content, relevant and essential wisdom throughout.

“For all of us, becoming Indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.”

Ever since the Costa Rica trip in Dec 2024, I have been paying more attention to the trees and plants where I live. It was a mild wake up call to admire and protect these beauties. This inclination towards greenery began a few years ago, when my color preferences were in the green shades and I started admiring the Oaks in the neighborhood in all seasons. I was not and still not an outdoors person. I admire nature but find it very hard to camp or live in the wilderness. I have killed many houseplants. Yet, there is something about trees and plants, I am inclined to do now.

This book arrived at the right time to whet my interest in plants and the spiritual connection we have with nature.

“If the maple is an it, we can take up the chainsaw. If a maple is a ‘her’, we think twice”

In many ways, this book was like wiping away the smudge on the glasses I have worn all my life, making it more clearer. I do read books to correct my spiritual vision. And when it actually happens it is the best ‘aha’ moment.

“Alone is a word without meaning in this forest”

My exact thought when hiking through the CostaRican rain forest. You can’t find a single tree all on its own minding its own business. It supported numerous other lives and they were all alive, thriving.

Some life lessons I would like to take away in the form of quotes:

“Transformation does not happen by tentative wading at the edge”

“The difficulty of digging is an important constraint. Not everything should be convenient”

“Take only what you need…Never waste what you have taken”

And lastly,

“You don’t show your love and care by putting what you love behind a fence. You have to be involved. You have to contribute to the well-being of the world.”

All of the book is gold. All of the book is a meditation. If I were to list my favorites among them: “Learning the Grammar of Animacy”, “The Three Sisters”, “Umblicaria: The Belly Button of the World”, “Collateral Damage”.

“I come here to listen, to nestle in the curve of the roots in a soft hollow of pine needles, to lean my bones against the column of white pine, to turn off the voice in my head until I can hear the voices outside it: the ‘shhh’ of wind in needles, water trickling over rock, nuthatch tapping, chipmunks digging, beechnut falling, mosquito in my ear, and something more — something that is not me, for which we have no language, the wordless being of others in which we are never alone. After the drumbeat of my mother’s heart, this was my first language.”