A few weeks ago, right after our first hard freeze, followed by an immediate warm up, I was falling asleep with the window open and the scent of decomposing green things wafted around the room. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was distinct. Made me think again of all my plant friends who had recently died, the ones I had tended all summer and the ones who were wild, who annually die back in this temperate climate.
Then I lie there, totally mystified by how much of the non-human world dies around us everyday and how we don’t even seem to notice or care. Who else lives and dies here, besides us humans, and aren’t they important too? Witnessing this current war in the middle east, I am horrified at all the killing of humans, but just as deeply do I grieve the death of the land- the trees, the animals both domesticated and wild- all the birds and insects and plant life and mushrooms and so on. War destroys far more than just human lives. We hear daily about the tally of human deaths, but what about the trees, the gardens, the wild places, the wildlife, the pets, the bees and birds, the water, the soil and all of these other children of earth who are being destroyed by the arms of men?
For all I have seen, even among the most sensitive of us, we are all killing things for our own food, habitats, entertainment, medicines and more, either directly or indirectly, by our daily choices. It is clear that a certain amount of death is needed to support life. But who else lives here that we are uncaringly and unnecessarily killing, this is the question? Who else has a life we may actually need to stand up for and protect, or at the least, be aware of our blatant disregard of it, since it is so easy to be human-centered?
Jainism, one of the smaller (but also one of the oldest) religions has at its center the practice of ahimsa—non-violence in thought, word and deed, by reducing harm to all living things as much as possible. To be a Jain, you move slowly and mindfully through the world, sweeping each insect out of the path instead of stepping on it. It is a beautiful approach to the sanctity of life, yet it is not a popular way and very inconvenient for our fast-paced reality.
A little after dawn one summer morning, I went up the hill to let out the chickens and found a black snake in the coop with a big lump just a couple inches from its head. I counted the 3 week-old baby chicks and sure enough, one was missing. The snake had it in its belly. I went into some kind of craze and thought I could save the chick if I killed the snake, so I ran down to the barn and got the hoe to chop off its head and rescue the chick. The floor of the coop was so soft with bedding that I couldn’t get a clean enough hit to take off the snake’s head, and by now it was trying to slither away, baby chick in its gut and all. I grabbed a cement block the 5-gallon bucket and set it on the snake’s head so it couldn’t leave, while I ran down to the barn again and got a saw. I had to be precise where I would kill the snake, because I didn’t want to hurt the baby chick. And so, in a fit of bloody murder, I sawed the snake’s head off then pulled back its skin to free the baby chick. Which of course was dead. Totally. Suffocated and fried in snake acid.
Once the adrenaline had left, I felt terrible. I love snakes, and wildlife, and particularly black snakes who eat rodents and other poisonous snakes. This snake was doing a very natural thing by eating a bird. I walked to the stream to wash my hands and the bloody tool, and mourned.
Everyday we are calculating the worthiness of other life based upon our human-centered relationship with it. Mosquito, stink bug, tick, flea, spider, squirrel, snake, crow, plants with burrs and thorns, people who have land you want to occupy…. Their merit of existence and whether they can live or die (or be controlled) is based upon a story that suits whatever it is we believe.
Inside of that, we forget why all of these life forms are here anyway. Which makes it even easier to kill because they don’t seem important. Why do so many beings live here beside us humans? A popular Creation story tells us that all things exist for the sake of humans, the ultimate creation, whose real home is elsewhere, and to subdue and have dominion over it. Another Creation story tells us that all life exists for its own sake, that it takes many moving parts to make things work well, and that this diversity makes an abundant, beautiful home for humans to have a life, too. Everything alive is our teacher and elder, especially the plants. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass about how Creation stories … “tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them, no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment.”
We see a rapidly declining ecological baseline by dominating who else lives here and not paying attention to why, and by not practicing humbleness and respect for all the beings we do kill in order to live. How can we support other life (yes insects especially!) without forsaking our own well-being? I don’t know but I am going to keep asking and naming the elephant in the room. I mean, I do know. Wonder. Gratitude. Sharing. Love.
I am always chanting that the world needs more earth stewards because it does. When taking on a role as an earth steward—someone whose aim is to protect and support biology and ecology— observing who else lives here is going to inform us how to behave in the environment around us. That’s our job. We lead by example and create micro-worlds of harmony wherever we are, as best we can, and we heal ourselves and the world, one thought, word and deed at a time. It is a magnificent time to be alive.
Mary Morgaine Squire
12/2/23
Invitations
-Wherever you live or are, pick a spot outside, a small area, to sit in and ask “Who else lives here?” Just sit with this awareness of how much life is pulsing around you, and let it guide your day.
-Explore other Creation Stories
~Love Letters to Our Plant Allies~
Olive
Olea europaea
Oleaceae
Dear Olive,
Oh, to behold the new and old groves of you in California and Sicily—I didn’t know you could be so stately! Having first met you as a pitted green oval thing with a pimento stuffed inside, then later as a soggy black lye-cured fruit from a can, I really had no idea what a majestic being you are, Olive.
I grew up on Wesson cottonseed oil and when I discovered your flavorful, golden oil in college, I was intrigued. My previous association with you was as Popeye’s wife, I am embarrassed to say. You were described as a virgin or an Extra virgin and even though I looked that up in my set of Encyclopædia Britannicas, the meaning of extra virgin olive oil wasn’t there. It took me a while to find somebody who could explain to me what made you virgin. Seems our blemished cottonseed oil never got such a title.
I honestly didn’t even think about what form you took- bush, briar, small plant, vine or what- to make your fruit, until I was in my twenties. And it wasn’t until then that I actually ate a real one of your fruits- not a canned, pitted one, but a gourmet, warmed, Greek olive that had been sun-cured. ‘This plant is powerful,’ I remember thinking of you.
Niçoise, Nyon, Cerignola, Kalamata, Castelvetrano, Alfanso, Mission, Manzanilla- these are some of the names we call your olives, depending upon where they were grown—some more bitter, others sweeter, all full-bodied and enjoyed in salads, tapenade, martinis, stews and as finger foods. You are a delicacy enjoyed worldwide.
Thank you for giving your oil for more than food- we use it to clean out our guts, and your leaves have been made into teas and extractions for centuries to support a healthy immune system, heal heart troubles, viral infections, colds and much more. I wish we could grow you here, as we are so dependent upon your oil to dress our salads and roast our veggies, but at best I may be able to order a live tree of you online and keep you in a pot, where you wouldn’t be very happy, I am sure.
Gone are the days when we could purchase your oil and fruit for a reasonable price. Just in the past couple years, disease, drought and overall production decrease due to climate change has more than doubled your cost. When I think of the things I may have to give up in my lifetime, I better start learning how to extract oil from our local abundant black walnuts and hickories and grow more sunflowers, because as it is now, I consume your virgin liquid daily and have no back-up plan.
I feel an urgency to write to you right now, though, to express how achingly sad and sorry I am for what is happening to whole families, whole groves of you, in the Middle East. You are being destroyed in the name of occupation and war. To be bulldozed and blown up because you bring life to the people— this is sickness, and I beg your forgiveness on behalf of the human nation. I thought you were the Christian symbol for peace. Didn’t God bring a branch from your tree back to Noah after the flood to say All will be well? Shame on us! There is no excuse to obliterate your old growth. I weep for you. I weep for your people. I weep for all of us.
In 2022, I had the blessed opportunity to sit under many of your trees on a plant pilgrimage to Sicily. I was thrilled to wander among your 100 year-old groves, very young relatively. You were growing out of black volcanic rocks and fully in bloom that June. I made a flower essence of your cream florets, and napped under your canopy. Enchanting. Beautiful. Healing. Loving. Giving. These are some of the ways I see you. Thank you, Olive, for being such an essential part of our lives. May you be protected. May you be well. May you live long.
Love,
Mary Plantwalker
The phrase from death comes life ran through my mind as I read this…. But we know that killing other humans doesn’t accomplish that, does it? I once read a Richard Bach novel in which wars were settled between two representatives of disputing nations in an amazing, televised dog fight. In the novel we learn that this means of settling wars evolved when leaders realized the actual cost of war in not only human lives, but also natural resources. The dog fight would settle the dispute and all nations agreed to abide by the outcome. Rather a unique solution and one that I rather think would be most beneficial now…..