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“No one who isn’t us is going to destroy Earth, and no one who isn’t us is going to save it. The most hopeless conditions can inspire the most hopeful actions. We have found ways to restore life on Earth in the event of a total collapse because we have found ways to cause a total collapse of life on Earth. We are the flood, and we are the ark.” ―Jonathan Safran Foer, We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast
Learn more from Bioneers climate solutionaries below.
Isha Clarke: A New Era of the Climate Justice Movement
In her keynote speech at the 2019 Bioneers Conference, Isha Clarke says that to build a successful global climate movement, we must prioritize the voices of those most impacted by environmental injustice. We must also resist efforts to tokenize the term “intersectionality” rather than actually implementing it in our movements and daily lives. What would a movement and a society functioning on a genuine understanding of intersectionality look like?
We talked to Isha a few months ago about adult allyship with Youth vs. Apocalypse, the group she leads to redesign the climate justice movement as a platform for youth of color and Indigenous youth. In that conversation, she said:
“Adult allyship is actually very strong at this moment. Adult organizations will reach out to YvA asking, “What do the young people want to do?” Adult organizers are very much trying to follow the youth. There is still work to be done there too, because, yes, the youth need to be leading this movement, and I’m super glad that people are on board with that, but there’s also a point at which we get stuck … where we can’t do everything. There’s a difference between leadership and carrying everything.
It’s also true that a lot of these adults have been organizing for decades; they have a lot of experience. Young people aren’t disregarding the fact that we’re working with people who have a lot of experience. Youth should be envisioning what moving forward looks like, but with the support of people who have been doing this work, and who may know things that we don’t know. There can be more collaboration. Overall though, we have a lot of adult allyship, and that’s something that is relatively new and it’s working out well for us.”
Bill McKibben: What We’ve Learned About Climate Change in the Last 30 Years
As an accomplished author, activist and co-founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben is a leading authority in the environmental movement. In this keynote speech, he explores: What lessons can we draw from three decades of struggles to address the existential threat of climate disruption? What do our failures reveal about the flaws of our political system and the economic nihilism of the fossil fuel industry? What strategies are most likely to lead to greater success to save our species from itself?
Here’s the latest news from McKibben, who remains one of the most active voices in the movement:
In his best-selling book Falter, McKibben warns us that our “human game” — the complex interplay of experiences across civilizations — may be unraveling because of climate change. Are we approaching “Game Over”? Read an excerpt from the book here.
McKibben penned this essay for The Guardian to emphasize the urgency of acting now, in order to prevent irreversible consequences of climate change. Read more here.
In this New Yorker piece, McKibben criticizes the greenhouse gas emissions — and efforts to cover them up by oil industries — that are driving up global temperatures. Read more here.
McKibben writes another article for the New Yorker, weighing the role of big money and fossil fuel special interests in the climate crisis. Read more here.
Just Transition as an Emerging Movement
A Just Transition affirms, restores and revitalize indigenous lifeways of responsibility and respect to the sacred Creation Principles and Natural Laws of Mother Earth and Father Sky, to live in peace with each other and to ensure harmony with nature, the Circle of Life, and within all Creation.
Learn how Indigenous Peoples are leading the way in a just transition from Indigenous women leaders who are leading their communities away from fossil fuel dependence.
Climate change is more than an “issue.” According to renowned author and activist Naomi Klein, “It’s a civilizational wake-up call delivered in the language of fires, floods, storms and droughts.” She says it demands that we challenge the dominant economic policies of deregulated capitalism and bottomless resource extraction. She describes the transnational Blockadia movement that’s opposing fossil fuels and warns about geo-engineering fantasies. Canadian Indigenous leader Clayton Thomas-Muller of Idle No More reports from the front lines of the Native-led rights based movement to stop the drilling of the Canadian Tar Sands.
350.org, co-founded in 2008 by climate activist Bill McKibben, is an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
More from Bioneers Thought Leaders on Climate Justice:
Heather McTeer Toney, leading an environmental inclusivity movement in her work at Moms Clean Air Force, discusses what it means to be an environmentalist today. Read more here.
Mishka Banuri, a youth climate activist, is working to protect the Utah lands she first fell in love with when her family immigrated from Pakistan. Read more here.
In his best-selling books, author and activist Paul Hawken takes a constructive and comprehensive approach to climate change solutions. Read more here.
Listen to youth across the world who are rising up to spur action on climate change.Read more here.
May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, delves into uncomfortable truths about what’s holding the climate movement back. Read more here.
This article contains the content from the 1/9/2020 Bioneers Pulse newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter straight to your inbox!
How can conscious engagement with plants, with which we’ve co-evolved since the dawn of our species, support healing in the physical, emotional and spiritual realms and help mend our separation from nature? Three brilliant herbalists/botanists, long on the cutting-edge of re-empowering the plant-human bond, share their insights. Hosted by Kathleen Harrison, plant person extraordinaire, President of Botanical Dimensions. With: Pam Montgomery, world-renowned herbalist, educator, spiritual ecologist, founder of the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries (O.N.E.), organizer of the Green Nations Gathering, author of Plant Spirit Healing andPartner Earth; Jolie Elan; founding Director of Go Wild Institute, deep ecologist, ethnobotanist, and global educator; Kami McBride, author ofThe Herbal Kitchen, with 25 years’ teaching experience, longtime leader of the beloved Earth Connection herb walks at Bioneers.
Listen to the panel, or read an edited transcript below.
KATHLEEN: Welcome everyone. Thank you for coming to this panel on the bio-intelligence of plants. We have with us today three very experienced plant women who each have years and years of learning about plant medicine and practicing it. I’m Kathleen Harrison, an ethnobotanist and founder of Botanical Dimensions, a nonprofit that’s dedicated to ethnobotany education. We have an ethnobotany library in Sonoma County and offer classes, and tonight my daughter and I will be showing a teaser for a film that we made about my fieldwork with Mazatec Indigenous people in Mexico, in this very room at 7 tonight.
We are living in a period we all recognize as a time of crisis, a crisis in nature, a crisis of course of the climate, and a crisis in culture marked by intense divisions based on suffering, fear and ignorance as well as a widespread sense of being disconnected from nature and disconnected from each other. My approach to this is that I like to look at what we humans know and what we might remember that we’ve known before but forgotten, the wisdom that comes to us from the ancestors, all of our ancestors, all of whom had to be tuned into nature in order to evolve and survive. Their survival got us this far, into this 21st century creative, teaming madness, but we’ve mostly lost the ability to listen and to be connected to all the other life forms that kept our ancestors alive. We have to remember those ancient skills and relearn to weave them into our decisions and our actions.
Every child is born with those instincts still intact. We see it in children, and you might remember it in yourselves when you were little children, but within just a few years we begin to forget. That connection to the world around us sort of gets squeezed out of us. It seems like a magical way of being that only attends early childhood, and then we take our place in this modern, displaced, disconnected culture. But if we can remember to go back to that childhood wonder, the childhood belief that everything is alive and can communicate, and that we have the capacity to hear it; if we can find that little touchstone inside ourselves, we can reawaken that way of perceiving, receiving, and reciprocating with the natural world all around us.
And some of us have. If you’re in this audience, you probably have found some aspect of that consciousness, whether through your love of gardening or in food plants, or in herbal medicine, or through some crisis in your life that required the intervention of plants, or maybe through a powerful experience with a psychedelic plant or mushroom, an experience that made you realize “oh my gosh, they’re all awake and paying attention.” How did I not notice that before? But if we focus solely on the spectacular effects of the big so-called “plant teachers,” we can miss a subtler but more important reality. To mend the world and to weave it together, we need to know how to listen on a daily basis. We need to know how the quieter plants speak, and how all species live in community. We need to remember that we are one little voice and set of ears, one being in that network of all the beings. We need to cultivate the kind of humility that allows us pay attention.
Robin Kimmerer, the Native American biologist and wonderful writer, says: “Attention is the doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, and the doorway to reciprocity.” Leslie Gardner, now passed on, said in her book, Life of Medicine: “One thing seems certain and that is that the plants desire to be in relationship to us, and are taking opportunities to help us recognize the kinship…If you seek it, your own individual path into the garden of the spirit will reveal itself.” And with that, I’d like to introduce our warm-hearted, wise plant women, starting with Pam Montgomery. Pam is an herbalist, author, teacher, and practitioner who has passionately embraced her role as a spokesperson for the green beings, and has been investigating plants, trees, and their intelligent, spiritual nature for more than three decades. She is the author of two books, including the highly acclaimed Plant Spirit Healing: a Guide toWorking with Plant Consciousness. She operates the Partner Earth Education Center in Danby, Vermont where she teaches classes, does plant research, and leads ceremonies. Pam also teaches internationally and is a founding member of United Plant Savers and more recently of the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries, or O-N-E. You can learn more about her work at her websites: wakeuptonature.com and NatureEvolutionaries.com.
Pam Montgomery
PAM:
Why are we here? We’re here because of plants. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for plants and trees. We evolved from them and we have a completely symbiotic relationship with them. When we talk about the intelligence of plants, we’re not talking about the kind of human brain-based intelligence that we are familiar with. Bio-intelligence is on another level. It has to do with the essence of life. We engage with plants for healing and not just physical healing, but emotional, mental and spiritual healing. There’s a vibratory resonance that plants have that we can tap into, and there’s a form of communication through that resonance that we can tap into with them. And plants can help us mend our relationship with all of nature, to come back into the fold and help us be all we can possibly be.
Mostly we just breathe because that’s what we do. We’re not conscious of it. We don’t pay attention to it, but I want you to pay attention to your breath right now, and I want you to be aware that underneath this building and its concrete foundation, below that there’s the earth, and outside that door, there are trees and plants, and I want you to become aware of where your breath is coming from. I want to be aware that all those and all those plants are breathing out oxygen. And I want you to become aware that you are breathing out carbon dioxide. So you are being given your oxygen from the green beings. There’s no other source of oxygen. It comes from ocean plants, trees and grass. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day you’re breathing, and the source of your breath is the green beings, so you’re already in relationship with the plants. You don’t have to work to be in relationship with plants. You just need to bring your conscious awareness to your breath, and you’re in relationship, so be in gratitude. Always remember to thank the plants and trees for giving us life.
As the title of this session suggests, we are indeed living in pretty insane times, and one of the biggest causes of lack of sanity is stress, and stress comes in many forms, but basically it’s when the demands of life exceed our ability to cope with them. There are environmental, chemical, biological, psychological, and existential stressors, to mention only a few. All these disrupt our body’s homeostasis and can lead to really severe, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual imbalances. To understand the effects of stress, we must look at the concept of non-self. Usually that’s an immunological term that describes things such as bacteria and viruses that the body identifies as invaders and activates the immune system to repel them.
However, there’s another aspect to what constitutes “non-self.” We humans evolved for millennia with the natural world, and our bodies recognize features of that natural world as an extension of our self. But our modern world is filled with cars and buildings and noise and dirty air that, deep down, the body instinctually reacts to as “non self” and unsafe. When we walk on concrete with shoes on rather than barefoot on the earth or eat processed food or drink water filled with chemicals, our bodies experience stress. Our co-evolution with the cycles of the natural world has conditioned us to rely on nature’s cues. Right now where I live in the Northeast, in Vermont, the geese are starting to fly south. They flow in those beautiful little Vs, and you can hear them way up in the sky sometimes coming from really far away. When I hear those geese my body remembers that cold weather’s coming and instinctively knows I’d better put on a couple extra pounds just to get ready for wintertime. My body recognizes that sound and reacts to it. The result of losing our connection to nature’s cycles and to living surrounded by “non self” threats is that our body is in a state of almost constant stress.
And these stressful life patterns lead to lack of coherence, erratic signaling, depleted immunity, low vitality, and spiritual malnourishment. Our spirit flame starts to burn a bit low, and we no longer recognize our true, essential nature. This can lead to a lack of sanity when you forget who you are. And when it’s prolonged, you end up in this place of amnesia where you really can’t remember what it means to be close to the earth. You can’t remember that you actually know the language of plants and trees. When you forget all of that, you become insane because you don’t know who you are. And an additional stress factor is that our world is changing more and more rapidly every day. To survive we will need to adapt to our changing environment.
But there is good news. Living organisms can help because they have been adapting for some 3.7 billion years (and land plants for roughly 470 million years). So adaptation has been happening on this planet for a very long time. Organisms and plants have been adapting to continue to provide a life-giving atmosphere through photosynthesis through countless cataclysms. They have been around for a very long time, way longer than we have, and they have that long view that they carry in their makeup, this impulse to sustain life over the long haul. And obviously we humans are pushing the edges of the biosphere, and we all know here that we have to make huge changes to cut the carbon we’re pumping into the atmosphere, and we’re going to need all the help we can get. To tap into that wisdom, we need to re-enter the dream of the green beings and remember how to live with Gaia in a sustainable way. We need to begin to remember our wild hearts and our indigenous souls, that part of our self that never left the earth. It’s still here. It’s inside us, and we just need to come back to the plants, come back to the earth and remember that.
Because I am an herbalist, I do want to mention a few specific plants that I really love, some so called “adaptogens,” that I think can really help us cope and return to our true, essential natures. An adaptogen is an herb that helps support the healthy function of every system in the body and protect it from biological, chemical, environmental, and psychological stressors. Such herbs have long existed in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicines and in various folk healing traditions, but the term adaptogen was introduced into scientific literature by Russian toxicologist Nikolay Lazarev in 1948, and the main Russian researcher who worked on adaptogens subsequently was Israel Breckhman. Russian scientists tested 158 herbs reputed in various folklores to be “super herbs” and found a few that really did have a broad range of positive effects on the entire body, and that newly coined term, adaptogen, described this class of herbs.
Breckhman established three criteria to identify an adaptogenic herb. The first one is non-specific resistance, which basically means that the herb has to increase the body’s resistance to broad range of agents, including physical, chemical toxins such as heavy metals and biological threats such as bacteria and viruses. It has to have a non-specific response, so it can address a broad range of stressors. Then it needs to have normalizing action, which means that it seeks to balance the body, to bring it back to homeostasis. Burdock, for example, can be either for hyper- or hypo-thyroidism. An adaptogen would tend to lower high blood sugar or raise low blood sugar. The third aspect of an adaptogen is that it has to have innocuous effects. The herb must produce only minimal, if any, physiological disturbances or side effects. It has to have very low toxicity. These are the three main traits that identify an adaptogen. Also, a true adaptogen is one that modulates the body’s stress response so that it reacts appropriately and helps you cope effectively.
rhodiola rosea
Since 1948 more work has been done on adaptogens, and quite a few have been identified. The most famous one is ginseng, but I want to share two of my favorites with you that are less well known than ginseng. The first is Rhodiola rosea. It grows in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, and for many years, a lot of the original research on it was in Russian and was not translated into English. It was not that well known in this country until recently, and now in the last few years, it’s become quite popular, and it’s really wonderful. It’s also called golden root and Arctic root. There are lots of species in that family, but the one we’re interested in is rosea. Its root has a light pink color, and it smells like roses, hence the name rosea. I take it every day, by the way.
Much of the research in the Soviet Union was focused on boosting the health of cosmonauts in their space program, and it was found that Rhodiola helped them withstand the extreme stresses of weightlessness, lack of exercise, and confinement, and it boosted their mental alertness. This plant does a lot of things. It helps enhance memory, it gives you energy, and it helps you cope. Some people are trying to use it to alleviate Alzheimer’s and other memory and brain impairment ailments. It’s reputedly good at protecting healthy cells for people undergoing chemo or radiation. It really helps with spiritual malnourishment as well. It’s a protector plant.
The other main adaptogen I want to mention is Sacred Basil, otherwise known as Holy Basil or Tulsi, another herb I take every single day. In India, it’s revered as a goddess. Tulsi was a goddess, the legend goes, and she loved Vishnu so much that she turned into a plant so she could be one of the eight sacred herbs that were given to Vishnu every day.
sacred basil
To finish up, what we are seeing on the planet right now is a green revolution, but I’d like to suggest it’s a re-evolution. When we move into right relationship with the natural world around us, we become nature evolutionaries. We begin to live in co-creative partnership with plants, trees, animals, water, air, land, and all the beings of nature that we recognize as having equal rights to thrive. We engage in sacred Earth activism informed by nature consciousness, and we recognize the sacred in all of life and honor it every single day and in all that we do. We engage in cooperation not competition, which includes both/and instead of either/or thinking. This leads to what Julie Morley calls creative synergy, a natural, intrinsic ability to cooperate toward mutually beneficial solutions. When we root our lives in interconnectedness, healing, compassion, listening, transformation, and the bio-intelligence of nature consciousness, a path opens, and we can move toward authentic peace that can live in each individual heart. This is our new story, which is being told here at Bioneers in almost every single presentation we listen to, and as we continue to live this new story, culture shifts and a new paradigm emerges. Thank you so much…and be sure to take your Rhodiola and Sacred Basil.
KATHLEEN: Thank you, Pam. Jolie Elan, our next speaker, is a deep ecologist, ethnobotanist, and educator. She is the founding Director of Go Wild Institute whose educational mission is blending modern science with the ancient awareness that the earth is alive, sentient, and sacred. She has brought her work around the world including the restoration of sacred, forest groves in India, and development of the herbal-medicine sector in wartime Kosovo. Jolie has helped thousands of students bond with our magnificent Earth through her education programs at conservation organizations, field institutes, herbal-medicine programs, and schools from university to elementary level. Jolie is also a certified spiritual director, and mentors people wishing to deepen their relationship with nature and spirit. Even with a master’s degree in forest ecology, oak trees are still her greatest teachers. She’s based right here in Marin County, and you can learn more about her live and online offerings at GoWildInstitute.org
Jolie Elan
JOLIE:
So my love affair with the oak trees began on my honeymoon, and it outlasted my marriage. In 2007, my new husband, David, and I were honeymooning in Napa Valley, and the oak trees were dropping acorns by the barrel-load. You couldn’t step anywhere without stepping on acorns. I knew that the majority of Native Peoples of California ate acorns almost every single day as a staple food, and I’d also tasted acorn food at a workshop, and it tasted like oatmeal mixed with walnuts, and it got me wondering if acorns could make a comeback as the original California cuisine, so David and I gathered 20 pounds in 20 minutes, and my acorn adventures began. And in my wildest dreams, I never would’ve guessed that the oaks would commandeer my life, convince me to do their bidding, heal me in dreams, and open up stores of Earth wisdom that I thought was not accessible to me being non-Native.
When I first started eating acorns, I wanted a gluten-free, viable, local superfood. Don’t we all want that? But I also had other motivations. I had my spent an itinerant activist life living all over the country working on sacred site and environment campaigns, and having committed my life to David, I wanted to commit my life to the land, to the spot-on Earth where I was living.
I knew that it was possible to have really deep, intimate relationships with nature, and I wanted that for myself, and so I figured I can eat my way into the web of life, but I felt a little conflicted. I’m a Jew from New York, and the last thing I wanted to do was appropriate anybody’s culture. My grandma ate chopped liver. She didn’t go for acorns, so I know I’ll never be indigenous to this land, but I was not okay with being a tourist anymore, so I threw myself into the oaks, and I learned everything that I could about them.
If you weighed every single living thing in North America, 20% of that biomass would be oak trees. I had to check that fact. I called the researcher, and I was like, are you sure? And she’s like, yes, I’m sure. And if you go to Mexico, 30% of the biomass is oaks. Oaks are major ecological players around the world. Oaks grow in Central America, in North America, throughout Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and throughout Asia. In many places where they grow, ancient people ate acorns and honored the oak tree before they were domesticating grains. So my great, great, great ancient ancestors were most likely eating acorns in the Fertile Crescent. Maybe your people were eating acorns too. It could be the case.
2,000 years ago, Pliny the Elder, who was a Roman naturalist and general, said acorns constitute the wealth of many nations because they are incredibly nutritious. Just 10 ounces of acorns can give you all of your carbs, all of your fat, and one-third of your protein for the day. The 20 pounds that David and I gathered in just 20 minutes could provide most of my nutritional needs for the month. Acorns are not only nutritious but they’re incredibly abundant. One large, valley oak tree can produce 500 to 1,000 pounds of acorns in a year. Our great California Central Valley that provides one-quarter of all the food we eat in the U.S. used to be a massive oak ecosystem. I cannot even imagine how magnificent that was with all of the wildlife that came in to eat those acorns. It just breaks my heart thinking about it. That acorn crop was estimated to be in the billions of pounds a year. If oaks were solely interested in reproduction, they would be more frugal, but oaks are incredibly generous creatures. They support an entire web of life. If you take the oaks out of the system, everything else goes downhill including the soil that’s held in place by their deep roots.
So the more I learned about oak ecology, the deeper I fell in love with the oaks, and this is one of the ways that we work with the bio-intelligence of plants. We fall in love. That’s the prerequisite. So I fell in love with the oaks, and my friends were getting a little sick of the conversations, so I had to spread the love. At the Go Wild Institute we launched our Wisdom of the Oak program, which is about restoring our relationship to the land and what feeds us, and I love teaching kids in inner city Oakland. We teach all kids K through college, but usually 4th or 5th grade, and I love saying to the kids, what town do you live in? And they’re always so proud. Oakland! And I say, what tree is that named after? And they—you can see it click for the first time ever. And they’re like, oaks.
So we start with a lesson on oak ecology and natural history, and then we go outside to prepare acorn food: we crack and grind and leach acorns. Basically acorns are just like tree nuts, but they’re a little more bitter than other nuts, so they require an extra step to process out the bitterness. You have to wash it out or leach it out, so we do that, and I make little acorn cakes, and I give each kid a little acorn cake shaped like an acorn at the end, and then we share our thoughts.
And there’s usually a kid who says something like, these acorn cakes are good but it seems like a pain, so why would you do that? Why would you make acorn food? And so if there’s a tree in their yard, I point to it, and I say, if we were going to grow wheat right where that tree is, what would it take? And one kid raises their hand to—we’d have to cut the tree down, and then another one says, we’d have to dig up the soil, and it goes on. We’d have to plant our wheat, and then we’d have to water our wheat, which is taking water from our rivers and our salmon. And then once your wheat is growing, all of those animals that are starving now because they don’t have acorns, they’re going to want to eat your wheat, so then you have to protect your wheat. You have to build fences, or you have to use chemicals or whatever means, and you just wait until all the animals die off so they don’t bother you, sort of what happened in the Great Central Valley. Then, once your wheat is ready, you have to cut it, and thresh it, and grind it, and then you have to do it every single year because wheat is an annual crop, so I think it’s easier to eat acorns. So I just ask you why not plant oak trees, restore our vibrant ecosystems, and eat acorns? Clearly, nuttier ideas have taken root in California.
Soon after I started doing their bidding, oaks began to come to me in dreams. In one dream I was inside a massive grandmother oak, and the energy was building from all around, pooling from the land all around, and it was electric. And at point the tree just could not hold that energy anymore, and it flashed as lightning, and I saw it go through the branches and the roots, and in my mind I knew this was restoring the fertility to all the land around. I woke up electrified and wondered what was that? Was that my subconscious or are oaks talking to me? I did some research and found out that lightning is five times as hot as the sun and fixes atmospheric nitrogen that’s usually unavailable and makes it available to the earth, hence making the land fertile again. Oaks have incredibly deep roots that go into the water table, so they’re excellent electrical conductors. An old adage goes “beware of the oak, it draws the stroke.” So, wow, I just dreamt that. I felt that oaks were not only downloading to me in my dreams, they were clearly directing me toward oak knowledge that was encoded in mythology.
Thor, the Norse god, is associated with lightning and thunder. He’s considered an oak god. Zeus, the almighty Greek god, is also associated with oaks as well as with lightning and thunder. Learning this, I began to research ancient cultures’ relationships to oaks. In ancient Greece, some priestesses would listen to the wind rustling in the oak trees, and they would interpret the word of the gods through those sounds. And the word “druid,” the ancient priests of the Celtic people, the word druid comes etymologically from the Old Celtic “deru,” which means tree or oak, and “wid”—to know. So the high, holy people were the ones who knew the oaks.
And the druids, and Zeus, and Thor—they’re sort of foreign to my cultural roots, but oaks play a pivotal role in my Jewish mythology as well. Abraham the father of the Jews, who’s also the father of Christianity and Islam—the Abrahamic religions, first saw what became the Jewish god underneath an oak tree, the oak of Moreh, a teacher oak tree. It was not just some random tree. It was an oracle tree where people had long gone for wisdom and healing. So throughout history, oaks have served as a portal to divine wisdom, to tap into that sacred intelligence of our Mother Earth in many different traditions.
So seven years into my acorn adventures and my marriage, David and I separated. We’d had way too many hard times. I was dealing with recovering from childhood trauma that was laying me low, and I was deeply sad. I was sort of brought to my knees, and then my cat of 21 years died, and it was just super hard. I couldn’t find the ground underneath my feet, and that night I looked at my altar that had my wedding ring and a picture of my cat right next to it, and that night, I had a dream. In the dream I was 6, and I was very scared because I needed to have all my limbs amputated, and so I ran out into this storm and I held onto this massive oak tree. I was crying, and the tree said “Aw, honey, do you see how tall I am?” I looked up, and she was indeed 200 or 300 feet tall. I replied: “Yeah, you’re really tall.” She went on “My roots go down that deep and my canopy is very wide, so you can always come to me in a storm if you need me.” When I woke up, I felt the ground under my feet. I felt solid and less alone. I felt healed, and I thought: “Wow, so that’s what plant-spirit medicine is.”
A few months later, I was hiking on Mount Tamalpais right here in Marin County to go to a meditation retreat, and this little tree got my attention. Trees and plants talk to me a lot. That’s not uncommon for me, but I’ve never had a tree yell at me before. And this one said, “Hey you, hey you.” I turned around, and it was a sapling, tanoak tree, and it was so proud, and it got my attention, and I said, “Yes?” It said, “When you get a chance, will you sit with us please?” What are you going to say to that? Of course, yes, I will. A couple days later when my mind was clear, I sat with the tanoaks, and one thing to know about the tanoaks on Mount Tam is that they’re really, really sick. They have a disease called sudden oak death. Many people say that the tanoaks in Marin might disappear altogether. It’s especially sad because the acorns of tanoaks are the best-tasting acorns I have ever tasted. They taste like butter cookies. They’re amazing, and they were very prized for many of the people that lived among the tanoaks, and now they’re very sick.
When I sat with the tanoaks, my mind got very clear, and I went very deep. And the trees said to me, “We’re really sick. Our wisdom is leaving the planet. We’re so sad. We watched our people die, the people who cared for us, people who loved us, and no one loves us anymore.” And I said: “Oh my God, that’s the so sad. What can I do?” And they said, “Well, you could do a ceremony for us.” And I said, “But I’m Jewish and from New York.” And they said, “Yeah, we’re not really happy about that either, but you’re what we have right now. You’re listening to us.” And I thought about that, and I thought this is a very popular trail I was on. Thousands of people walk on that trail every month, and the trees were probably calling out for decades. Many species are calling to us, saying: “Please help us; remember us. We need you to live in balance with us. We need you to hear us. We have things we need you to hear.”
At this point I don’t really feel like I’m working with the intelligence of the oaks. I feel like the oaks are working with my intelligence, and I feel like the oaks are the ones that got me here to talk to you, that want me to talk to you. The oaks are the ones that got me to stand up here to invite you all to come to the 6th Annual Mount Tanoak Ceremony next Sunday, October 27th. It’s on my website (GoWildInstitute.org); it will be a super beautiful day, so please come join us. It was the oaks that got me to make acorn food initially, and I made acorn crackers for you all if you want to take some on your way out.
Let me end by saying that nature is calling to us all the time, and every time we connect with a plant or an animal, we align with the sacred intelligence of our magnificent, brilliant Mother Earth. It’s a way in. Our Mother Earth is wise and brilliant. The Earth has deep intelligence, and if we can align with that intelligence, we will be part of the Earth healing herself, and we will be directed to do what we need to do.
KATHLEEN: Thank you, Jolie. Our next speaker is Kami McBride. At 19 Kami’s passion for herbal medicine was propelled by an excruciating brain surgery that she needed because of a medication’s unexpected side effect. She started to question her upbringing of using pharmaceutical drugs as a primary approach to health, and quickly felt the calling of the plants. Now, her 30 years of teaching herbal medicine has helped thousands of people learn to use herbal remedies as the centerpiece of their healthcare plan. She’s taught herbal medicine at the University of California School of Nursing, and in a health masters-degree program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She’s the author of The Herbal Kitchen, and her live and online workshops help people revitalize their relationship with the plant world and work with herbal medicine for home-wellness care. Here at Bioneers, she is beloved for leading wonderful plant walks for many years now. She’s based here in the North Bay, and can be reached at KamiMcBride.com. Welcome, Kami.
Kami McBride
KAMI:
Thank you for being here, and I’m really thankful to be part of this panel with these great teachers. I used to go to Pam’s Green Nation gatherings in the mid-‘80s when I was a little puppy dog, and, Jolie, I’m incredibly inspired by your work. And Kat is someone whose work has taught me so much for decades. I’m so grateful to be here.
My grandfather, John McBride was the grandson of Irish-Scottish settlers who settled in Wintu territory in the Vacaville-Davis-Dixon area in the 1850s. They came, they planted wheat, and barley, and they benefitted tremendously from the incredible, abundant place that they landed in. I’ve been trying to unpack that legacy for a long time. That grandfather started one of the first kids’ nature camps in 1969 in that valley, and I went on my first herb walk at that camp when I was 8 years old, and I went on those herb walks until I was 14. But there was a lot of violence in my household, so I have huge gaps of memory. There are big spaces of my life that I don’t remember, but I remember everything about those herb walks. They set me on my path, and throughout my childhood and teenage years, I kept trying to learn as much as I could. I went to the library and found one book on the local wildflowers of the area, and when I became a teenager I went to Berkeley to the used bookstore and was thrilled to find a few books on holistic health and herbs.
Finally, at some point after studying relentlessly for quite a while, I started sharing, and I quickly realized that as I started sharing about herbs and herbal-medicine making, that in our current culture, herbs could easily turn into yet another extractive consumption industry, and that’s not what I wanted to be part of. I kept looking for a wise, elder woman who could teach me the old ways. Unfortunately that never really happened for me in my life, but what I started doing was praying. And I wasn’t raised on prayer. Everyone in my family was an atheist, so I guess I had a clean slate. I didn’t call it prayer at the time. I just started telling the Earth how beautiful she was and started to ask her to please help me, to guide me. I would ask her things like: “Please help me know how to work with you,” “How to do this in the best way,” and “What can I do for you?” And those questions have informed every consultation I have given, every class I have taught. Those same questions have been a guiding force and a grounding of everything I have done in sharing plant medicine for the past 30 years.
And I was guided from the start. I was told to gather women, listen to the Earth, and make medicine. So in 1994, I started my school and I started doing that. And what I learned through listening to the Earth is that she, our mother, is always speaking to us but that we just forgot how to listen. We humans are at the top of the food chain, and over time we got lazy. Our culture just shut down those sorts of experiences of communion with the natural world that they view as appropriate for children’s play but not for adults.
I spend Thanksgiving with this one family every year, and a few years ago, their 4-year old daughter came into the house with a small, green caterpillar that she brought to show her mom and dad, and they were just sort of dismissing her saying, “yes, honey, that’s cute,” but I could see her entire nervous system was just begging for someone to validate her ecstasy of being related to this creature. And when I saw that, I’m in charge of the pies, and I take pie making really seriously, but I stopped what I was doing to try to be with her and validate her feelings of wonder, of love and relatedness to one of Mother Earth’s creatures. We all have those childhood memories, but we have to recover them and re-awaken those senses and nurture them in our children.
I was part of a group of parents at my son’s school that he went to when he was in early childhood. We decided to walk around that school to listen to the land where our children spent a lot of their time. We started where the water came out of the spigot, and we followed the water lines, and we found the source of the water, and we started hearing the water as a group, and after that we were able to bring the voice of the earth and the water to the school board and to the school meetings, and we started making decisions for that school on a much higher level of connection to the land and to each other. So I advise you, if you can, to find your Earth-listening people. If you have no one in your life tuned in to listening to the Earth, find somebody. Whether it’s two of you, or five of you, or nine of you, get together and walk the land that you live on or near, walk around your block, walk near the places where you work, and listen together, because when you listen in a group, it’s far more powerful. Work on your listening skills, and you will get to a point at which you will be able to bring the teachings of the earth into your everyday experience, to help guide and enrich your life.
Close your eyes for a minute. We’re going to go on a little memory walk. This is just about opening to receive, and it’s got its own timing, so it might not come right now. It might come tomorrow, but just begin by bringing your total awareness into yourself, and an easy way to do that is through your breath. Just give yourself the incredible gift of three deep breaths right now, and bring your awareness back to your breath. And just breathe. I’m going to take you on a little walk. No pressures. Imagine yourself on a trail in a forest just walking. Just notice the time of day, maybe the light, maybe you can feel the leaves or sticks crackling under your feet. Just let yourself walk. And just walk until you come to a recent memory. It could have been today, yesterday, the day before, a memory of when something of this Earth—a flower, a plant, a tree, a river, anything—just struck you as so beautiful that you could feel that beauty in your whole body. Stay in that place for a moment. Notice how it feels and notice whatever you can about this place.
And notice how it feels in your body when you feel such love for a place. Say thank you to this place, then put yourself back on that trail, and we’re going to keep walking a little bit. We’re going to walk back in time to another place earlier in your life that called you, that grabbed you, that you were smitten by, and let yourself settle in that memory of someplace on this beloved Earth that awed you by its beauty, and let yourself rest there. What do you notice there? What time of day is it? What do you smell? What are the colors? What is it about this place, and how do you feel here? What does it feel like in your body to feel the love of the Earth and to feel love for the Earth? Once again say thank you and then get back on the trail again.
We’re walking back to an even earlier memory, maybe early childhood, to a time you felt pulled by the Earth. There was something about a plant or a mud puddle or a rainstorm that you could just feel your whole being connected to. Where are you? How old are you? Let this memory permeate your nervous system so you can remember and bring back the feeling of connection. Say thank you again in your own way and then gently bring yourself back, slowly back through these memories into this room.
To be a full human on this planet requires of us that once in a while we lay our belly down on this Earth and listen to what she has to say. She is speaking to us all the time. The message that came to me from the oak outside here before this gathering was “We just want to be loved again. We want you to love us. We want humans to find their hearts again, and remember that we thrive on love just as humans thrive on love.”
AUDIENCE Q+A
Audience member (AM) question: Can you recommend any other adaptogens?
PAM: One that is common and grows all around is Stinging Nettle. I would encourage you to drink nettle tea every day. Ashwagandha used in Ayurvedic medicine is another good one, but I mostly like common herbs that I can grow myself. I advise you to experiment, and when you find a couple of favorites, do those.
AM: What do you recommend for allergies?
PAM: Those adaptogens can be really good for allergies, but it depends on the type of allergy. If pollen allergies? Pollen?
AM confirms that it is pollen, grasses, and all fruits and vegetables.
PAM: Wow. Goldenrod is really good for pollen allergies, and Nettles also.
AM: In that memory exercise, I saw nature as wallpaper.
KAMI: I’ve facilitated thousands of memory walks with people and listened to the go-around afterwards, and one thing I’ve learned is that everybody’s way in is different, and everybody’s doorway is different. You may have an experience that you don’t understand, but the thing is you can dialogue with that experience. It’s not just that you get a message and that’s it. It’s something to be discovered and worked with. You can, for example, gather something that’s symbolic of your experience and put it on your altar and ask for a message to come to you in a dream. It’s a process. You’re building a skill that was shut down and schooled out of you. And sometimes the pain can be so great. We might find an oak tree we feel love for and then see that it’s the only oak tree standing for a long way, and you can feel the clear cut of a whole forest that had been there, and that level of pain can also shut us down once we open up.
PAM: When you’re overwhelmed by the diversity, the texture of everything, if you look in really, really close you might find a doorway, but the doorway can often actually be tiny: a relationship to one place, one plant, one species we really look at, can then open us up to finding a connection to all of nature.
AM: What is the relationship of oaks to wildfires?
JOLIE: Here in California our oak ecosystems evolved with fire, and they also evolved with humans setting fires. Humans had a relationship with the oaks. The oaks took care of the humans with food, and the humans took care of the oaks. And a lot of people say that the reason that we have sudden oak death here is because we’ve taken fire out of the ecosystem. But we’ve taken it out of the ecosystem now for so long and to such an extent that it’s really hard to put it back without catastrophic fires, so we have this problem. If we can reintroduce small, contained fires in the right way at the right time, that would be beneficial for our oaks, but it has to be done very carefully.
AM: How can one develop the skill of plant communication?
PAM: I don’t think communication with plants is a skill set. I believe it’s a basic right, a human right that we have. We inherently know how to communicate with plants and trees because we’re from them. It’s just a remembering process. We’re kin to these plants and these trees, but you have to get to a quiet place and eliminate as much distraction as possible and the static of electromagnetic fields). And then start with your breath, and then you’ll start to hear the messages much more clearly. There are a few chapters in my book about how to communicate, so you can check that out.
KATHLEEN: Thank you all. I’m sorry, we are out of time, but I hope everyone finds that still place and that moment to tune in and explore your plant relationships, and that we see you down the line. Blessings, everybody.
The mark of a good farmer, within conventional farming circles, has long been a “clean field” – bare ground void of any plant cover between the crop rows. Winter fallowed fields also are left exposed without anything growing on them, but that kind of misguided thinking is changing. The fastest growing trend in agriculture is cover crops. According to the 2017 Agricultural Census, cover crop plantings increased by 50 % over the previous 5 years, but there’s a lot of room for continued growth, only about 4% of all farmers in the USA employ this easily adopted practice that supplies a wealth of benefits.
Cover crops reduce erosion, improve water quality, control weeds, attract beneficial insects, and reduce polluting nitrogen runoff into waterways. Plants such as various legumes, grains and grasses that are grown primarily to increase the health of the soil rather than to harvest for market, can provide an economic incentive by increasing yields and provide ecological services by sequestering carbon and boosting fertility. The more extreme and erratic the weather, the more benefits cover crops provide, and the more their advantages increase in comparison to farmland without cover crops.
Cover crops shift the approach to farming from one that emphasizes chemicals to one that emphasizes biology. Through photosynthesis and plant decomposition, cover crops mimic nature’s method of cycling carbon and other nutrients to nurture the synergies among the complex community of organisms in the soil food web.
Tim LaSalle worked in Africa as an advisor to small farmers and as a research coordinator on soils and food security for the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Tim also served as the CEO of the Rodale Institute and more recently co-founded the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative at California State University, Chico. At a Bioneers Regenerative Agriculture field day at Singing Frogs Farm, Tim discussed the benefits of cover crops, “By keeping live roots in the ground, keeping the soil well covered, and growing a lot of biomass, you will capture a lot of carbon in the soil, which will improve the biology and improve water infiltration and water retention to fight droughts. As the biology gets healthier, photosynthetic efficiency improves, which leads to retaining more carbon in the soil. At the ecosystem level, there will be more biodiversity aboveground and a much more biodiverse and healthy soil biome—especially if you plant multi-species cover crops.
“These principles can work and work fast. Are they applicable on large commercial farms? Without question. We were doing cover crop work for years; it’s a matter of not leaving bare ground, keeping something growing on it. That’s a big step forward.
“We find we need less chemicals. Eventually people like Gabe Brown and Gail Fuller and farmers around the country learned that they don’t need to write a check for fertilizer anymore. They don’t need insecticides or herbicides as much. Once the chemicals are out of the system, the biology can flourish even better and the system gets more resilient. That’s exciting for all of us. It’s exciting for farmer profit; it’s exciting from the standpoint of seeing increased yields and better water cycles. We’re not polluting our streams, and we’re not putting excess nutrients in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Paicines Ranch is an exemplary operation implementing regenerative agricultural principles and adapting them to the micro-climate of their diverse 7000+ acres of rangeland, row crops and vineyards. Cover cropping is a key part of their system, and they have also integrated animals into their cover crop rotations. When the cover crop has matured, they bring sheep to eat it down instead using a tractor to mow it. The sheep get fed well and leave behind rich nutrients in the form of urine and manure.
Some farmers think that cover cropping is a long-term investment in the soil and feel that they are not able economically to take land out of production for a future payoff even for one growing cycle. Claudio Nuñez of Paicines Ranch explains how Paicines, by adding animals to the system, changes that,“Cover cropping is the single biggest thing that anybody could or should do. Once you integrate the animal into that, you have a salable lamb harvest. The economic value that was to be realized down the road in a couple of years becomes profitable right off the bat. Integrating animals and cover cropping are probably the two most important aspects of our system.”
Cover crops at Paicines Ranch are healing the land and adding to the economic bottom line in quantifiable ways. Initially the nutritional content – known as the “Relative Feed Value” (RVA) – of the cover crop was insufficient to support healthy weight increases in the animals. The animals only gained a pound per day. But by continuing to grow cover crops, which build healthy soil with more nutrients, the RVA went from 80 to 260 in the third year, a dramatic increase in nutrient density, resulting in an average weight gain per head of livestock of 3.5 pounds per day. Claudio said that, “As the landscape became more functional, the critters gained more weight. That’s dollars baby, sunshine dollars.”
“Sunshine dollars” are one of the benefits of the economy of photosynthesis – using the energy of the sun to transform atmospheric carbon into food that nourishes plants, the life in the soil and livestock, while healing the ecosystem and providing a better livelihood for the farmer.
“The cycle” Claudio said, “becomes pretty virtuous in that we’re maximizing and intensifying the different revenue sources, the fertility, the solar energy capture. It’s more efficient all the way around.”
The USDA NRCS 5 principles for heathy soil are: minimize soil disturbance, keep the soil covered, keep a living root in the ground, provide diversity, and integrate livestock. Cover crops can be a strategy to achieve 4 out of 5 of those principles. Keeping those live roots in the ground creates the nutrient pathways from the sun to the soil and is therefore the foundation for regenerating farmland soils.
Crop rotation was practiced by farmers in ancient Rome, Greece and China. Ancient Middle Eastern Farmers rotated crops as early as 6000 BC. Crop rotations improve soil tilth, reduce pest, weed and disease pressure and increase biodiversity on the farm. By varying the crops planted in the same field season to season, farmers can improve soil tilth (the physical condition of the soil as it relates to plant growth). Different plants have diverse root shapes and sizes that can improve the chemical, physical and biological structure of the soil in a variety of ways.
Crop rotations can also reduce pest and disease pressure because different plants disrupt the lifecycle of certain pests and diseases. A variety of plants provide a wider variety of nutrients to soil life, and different plants take up dissimilar nutrients from the soil. So, rotating crops will help to minimize the depletion of certain nutrients. All of these benefits can help reduce inputs (fertilizers and pesticides) and increase yields. According to SARE (Sustainable Agriculture and Research Education), “Yields of crops grown in rotations are typically 10% higher than those of crops grown in monoculture in normal growing seasons, and as much as 25% higher in droughty growing seasons.” NCAT (The National Center for Appropriate Technology) provides crop rotation tips.
Most of the 10 billion animals that are raised for food annually experience appallingly inhumane conditions. CAFOs – Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations – mercilessly treat living beings as if they were lifeless machines. Confined to spaces that cruelly restrict natural movements, these animals live in their own waste. Broiler chickens, for example are bred to grow fast, eat till they are morbidly obese and die young. John Webster, Professor Emeritus, University of Bristol, UK, says that commercially raised juvenile chickens are so overweight that their bones, joints and organs can’t support them. And that they, “are in chronic pain for the last 20 percent of their lives. They don’t move around much… because it hurts their joints so much.”
Innovative farmer Joel Salatin says that chickens have a right to express their “true chickeness.” As sentient beings, animals have rights. The right, for example, to live their lives in a healthy natural environment, even if they do ultimately end up at the abattoir. Regenerative Agriculture animal husbandry practices based on John Webster’s Five Freedoms require that livestock are well fed with their natural diet; do not live in stressful conditions; do not experience pain, hunger, injury or disease due to the system they are raised in; have the opportunity to express their normal species behavior, and are properly sheltered from environmental extremes.
“The nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself.” …..Franklin D. Roosevelt
FDR wrote those words in 1937 in conjunction with the recently launched effort to create soil conservation districts. By that time, about 35 million acres of farmland in the Southern Great Plains had been decimated by an extended drought and windstorms that blew topsoil away and devastated the lives of rural people. Farming practices, specifically the plow, greatly exacerbated the impact of the environmental catastrophe of the Dust Bowl era.
Some of the most fertile soil in the world developed in the Great Plains as a result of the co-evolution of enormous herds of bison and deep-rooted perennial native grasses that built a resilient soil structure and provided a protective armor over the topsoil, preventing erosion.
Plowing the grasslands to farm left the ground bare and destroyed the ecosystem’s ability to endure weather extremes. We now know that plowing or tilling also releases carbon into the atmosphere and is a very real contributor to climate change.
The Problem with Tillage
Regenerative farmer Elizabeth Kaiser of Singing Frogs Farm has parked the plow and is using a no till system on her’s and her husband Paul’s 8-acre farm (2.5 acres under cultivation), “Tillage is when you take a tractor, when you take a rototiller, or when you take a horse and plow and you turn up the soil. You take the soil aggregates from larger sizes down to smaller sizes. There are two negative things that will happen. One is chemical and one is biological.
“The chemical part is that as the soil aggregates are broken up into smaller and smaller pieces, the surface area is increased compared to the volume. Tilling also brings oxygen into the system so more oxygen is in contact with the soil, which volatilizes a lot of compounds. Carbon becomes carbon dioxide, nitrogen becomes nitrous oxide, and there are also certain processes that can create methane. Those are the three most potent greenhouse gases. As farmers and ranchers, carbon and nitrogen are the things that we need most in our soil. So, the act of taking them out of the soil and putting them where we need it the least – in the atmosphere – makes no sense.
“The second thing that happens is biological. As the aggregates are broken up, the tilling creates total ecological destruction for the organisms that are in the soil. ‘Tilling the soil is the equivalent of an earthquake, hurricane, tornado and forest fire occurring simultaneously to the world of soil organisms. Simply stated tillage is bad for the soil.’ That quote is from the USDA. This is not some West Coast leftie idea. We know that tillage is bad for the soil, and we need to figure out how to farm and sustain ourselves on this planet in a way that doesn’t do so much damage.”
No-Till Options
If plowing destroys soil health, what alternatives do farmers have? That depends on the scale of the operation. Kaiser describes a few options for the small-scale farm down to the backyard garden.
“There are a lot of options when starting a no-till field depending on what your resources are, what your soil type is, what you’re going to be growing, and how much space you are going to be utilizing.
Elizabeth Kaiser, Singing Frogs Farm
“If you’re already tilling, till one more time, create beds, put compost on top and never till it again. That’s how most of our beds were formed because we were already doing tillage.
“A second way is using occultation, which is more time intensive. Leave whatever is there – the grass, the weeds, or whatever– to decompose in place until you have a clean slate, and then create your beds. To start, we put down landscape fabric over an entire area where there was pretty strong grass and left it for six months. Then we did a slight inoculation with some compost teas to make sure the soil biology was high. We covered the whole thing in straw, and we then pulled up the straw and created beds. We spread a bit of compost on the beds, but not very much and then we were ready to plant.
“The last way is resource intensive. If you have a smaller space or if you want to get going quick, or you have the resources, I highly recommend this. Put down cardboard, build your beds out of two inches of compost, put straw flakes down for pathways, and go. If you’re just doing two beds in your backyard where you have lawn, this is what I recommend.”
No-Till for Larger Farms
But these recommendations, although highly effective, are not practical for larger farming operations. No-till farming systems have been used on medium size and larger farms since the 1940’s and are increasing in favor. According to the 2017 USDA Agricultural Census, over 100 million acres of cropland in the US are no-till. The caveat, however, is conventional no-till farmers use toxic herbicides like Round-Up to kill the cover crop and weeds. Conventional farmers who till also use similar chemicals, but they have the option to use a disc or plow to control weeds. So, no-till does not decrease chemical use and, in some cases, may even increase it.
Organic farmers are highly dependent on tilling because they are not able to use herbicides. The need for herbicides eliminated no-till as an option for organic farmers until the Rodale Institute designed the roller-crimper and made the design available free to farmers in 2006.
No till roller crimper
Designed for use after a cover crop has matured, the roller-crimper mechanically kills the cover crop by rolling over and crimping the stem to break the water flow from root to stem. The timing of this is critical; if done too early, the plant may not die back sufficiently, if done too late there will be too much seed produced and left in the field. The optimum time to pass over the field with a roller-crimper is when the cover crop reaches anthesis – the time when the flower opens when the plant goes from the vegetative stage to the reproductive stage. Once the roller-crimper passes through the field a thick, protective, weed-suppressing mulch is formed, which can be planted through. As that mulch breaks down it feeds soil life and deposits carbon in the soil. Iowa State organic specialist Kathleen Delate’s research shows no statistical difference between the yields of no-till and plowed plots of organic soybeans.
Mowing the cover crop is also an option, but that doesn’t result in the same level of weed suppression as the roller-crimper mower and, in some cases, doesn’t kill the cover crop allowing it to regrow.
The Benefits of No Till
No-till has proven agricultural benefits: less erosion, lower fuel cost due to less tractor use, less soil compaction, better soil moisture, and better soil health. Of course, there is a learning curve to adapt the practice to a specific farm crop and soil and some initial start-up costs, but the past has shown the terrible ecological and economic costs of tilling.
People in the 1930’s who lived through the trauma of, what was at the time, the greatest ecological disaster in the US history, learned the value of soil the hard way. Today topsoil is being lost at an alarming rate threatening global food security. At the same time, we face an even greater ecological crisis – the disruption of the climate due to anthropogenic causes. No-till can help address both of those problems.
Will we make the same mistakes over again or can humanity make the necessary changes to protect life on the planet? Agriculture, a key contributor to climate change, has the potential to be a leader in mitigating the climate crisis. Adopting no-till farming, one of a number of Regenerative Agricultural practices, is a readily available tool to help turn things in the right direction.
“Our soils have a carbon debt; the atmosphere is gushing with carbon. The carbon over our heads is literally in the wrong place.” Rebeca Burgess of Fibershed
Most terrestrial life is dependent on a thin layer of topsoil where our food is grown and where the plant kingdom converts carbon dioxide into life sustaining oxygen. It takes a millennium for nature to produce 1.2 inches of topsoil, the zone where most of the nutrients and biological activity reside. Maria-Helena Semedo of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says that if the current rates of degradation and erosion continue we may only have sixty years of topsoil left. With the possibility of so few harvests remaining, the threat of global food insecurity is a serious concern.
The concurrent climate crisis is in need of real solutions, not to just reduce the increasing damage of ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, but, perhaps even more importantly, to reduce the amount of carbon that permeates the atmosphere.
Carbon is the common element in both crises. In soil there is a deficiency and in the atmosphere an excess. As Rebecca Burgess, Executive Director and Founder of Fibershed, says, “The carbon over our heads is literally in the wrong place.” Carbon is an essential component and building block of healthy soil and soil is a potential superstar when it comes to mitigating climate change.
Carbon Can be the Solution Instead of the Problem
Tim LaSalle, co-founder of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture at California State University at Chico, has been an early proponent of the power of soil to draw CO² from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil where it provides multiple agricultural benefits.
At a Bioneers on-farm field day, LaSalle talked about the relationship between the mismanagement of soil and climate, “We have no experience of trying to live on a planet of 350 parts per million (ppm) CO² in the last 400,000 years. There’s been nothing that says this kind of lifestyle, food production, water cycling, weather disturbances will work except below 300 ppm. That’s why in any organizations I work with, I would promote and work towards 280 ppm or less.
“Within a year or two, we really have to turn the trajectory of our climate pathway around, and that doesn’t mean just reducing emissions. As a matter of fact, if we stopped emitting today, the planet would continue to warm beyond habitability. We have to draw down carbon out of the atmosphere.
“If you look at the amount of greenhouse gasses that industry has emitted, it doesn’t add up to what we’ve lost in carbon from our soils. 10,000 years ago when agriculture began, we started to clear forests, disturb grasslands, and eventually invented this thing called a plow that disturbs the soil and releases carbon into the atmosphere. From a legacy level, there’s more carbon in the atmosphere from our soils than there is from our fossil fuels.
“Look up and down the fields in California, in the Midwest, in the East and in the South of this country. When we plow and disc, we lose soil and we lose carbon because carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere every time the soil is turned over.”
Carbon’s Agricultural and Climate Benefits
Carbon makes up approximately 50% of soil organic matter (SOM). Regenerative farmers are placing a focus on increasing SOM because it increases the soil’s capacity to hold water, making it more drought resilient and reducing erosion. SOM is the basis for a healthy soil structure that creates an environment for beneficial soil microbes to thrive and support fertility. As soils are farmed in ways that optimize carbon sequestration, SOM can play an important role in keeping excessive carbon out of the atmosphere.
Raising livestock holistically on 10,000 acres of California coastal prairie, Doniga Markegard is focused on carbon. “It’s all about the carbon cycle. You want more roots, more carbon stored, less carbon in the atmosphere. Each 1% increase in soil organic matter holds 20,000 gallons more water per acre. That’s really key because essentially in the last 150 years, prime agricultural soils have lost 30-75% of carbon, which has added billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.”
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that sequestering atmospheric carbon in agricultural soils and rangelands has the potential to return carbon levels to those prior to the Industrial revolution.
In 2015 France launched the 4 per 1000 program at the COP21 Paris Climate Conference to encourage farmers to increase carbon in their soils by .4% per year. If all farmland, pastures and rangeland worldwide accomplished this increase annually, in a matter of a few decades a significant amount of CO2 could be drawn out of the atmosphere and sequestered in soils, increasing fertility and stabilizing the climate.
In 2008 when LaSalle was CEO of the Rodale Institute, he and Dr. Paul Hepperly studied the carbon sequestration data from the Rodale Organic Farming Systems Trials; they found that Regenerative agricultural practices like no-till, applying compost, growing multispecies cover crops, planting hedgerows, not leaving bare soil, and others increase the soils capacity to sequester carbon.
Research Shows How to Optimize Soil Carbon
According to LaSalle, breakthrough research by Dr. David Johnson, a molecular biologist at New Mexico State University (NMSU), has shown how a “healthy soil biome with a fungal dominant community can actually sequester a magnitude greater than what we previously understood was possible, maybe even 10 times as much.” On the NMSU webpage Be Bold Shape the Future, Dr. Johnson writes, “Soils with higher carbon content and larger fungal populations enabled us to double the production in the soil with the same amount of water.”
With higher yields, water conservation, increased resilience to droughts and floods and the power to dial back climate catastrophes, what’s not to like about soil carbon sequestration? But LaSalle points out that there are some skeptics,
“Some people say that the science isn’t peer-reviewed yet. But I am aware of at least three farmers – and I know there are a lot more — who are reporting soil carbon sequestration levels even greater than what Dr. Johnson is showing. Their soil has been tracked, so we have valid affirmation that Dr. Johnson’s test plots in New Mexico are being replicated on-farm at farm-scale right now.
“This is something that scientists should be more inquisitive about, not critical of, and start to replicate trials all over the place in their test plots and with farmers and start to measure the carbon changes. We need this information. We need these practices. We need to start applying them. If we have more to learn, which I know we do, we better get busy.”
Keeping an armor on the soil with living plants, crop residues or mulches protects the soil in a multitude of ways. The cultural practice of having “clean” farm fields with exposed soil had, in the past, been considered a sign of a good farmer, but that misconception is changing thanks to research that shows that a protective covering is a key element of healthy soil practices. Soil armor keeps the soil cool and moist. Bare soils will evaporate more quickly due to exposure to heat and, in the extreme, can reach 140 degrees killing microorganisms.
An armor on the soil prevents erosion from wind and rain. A soil cover buffers the impact of rain – which on a bare soil can cause compaction – and allows rain water to infiltrate into the soil rather than running off. Crop residues and mulches suppress weeds and as they breakdown they recycle nutrients back to the soil.
The leaves of cover crops shield the soil surface, and their living roots cycle nutrients produced by photosynthesis into the soil to sustain the health of soil microbial communities. The Natural Resources Conservation Service claims that healthy soils are covered all the time.
The Regenerative Organic Alliance has developed standards for Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) that addresses all aspects of regenerative agricultural practices and principles including a section on Farmer and Worker Fairness. The program uses the National Organic Standards as a minimum requirement, but goes beyond organic in some specific areas. Social and economic justice for farmers and farmworkers is one of those. The Farmer and Worker Fairness section contains fair pay to the farmer and a living wage to farmworkers, equal opportunity regardless of race, gender, marital status, religious beliefs, disabilities or political opinions. It recognizes the rights of small farmers to organize to be able to compete globally and for farmworkers to organize and collectively bargain for fair wages and good working conditions. A clean and safe working environment would be ensured by third party audits.
Farmers and farmworkers are exploited by an economic system that places corporate profits over financially equitable and respectful relationships. According to the World Bank 78% of the world’s poor are farmers or ranchers. Most farm workers do not enjoy the same rights as workers in other industries; rights like worker’s compensation, disability insurance, health insurance and the right to join unions and collectively bargain. Federal law does not entitle farm workers to overtime pay and in some cases farm workers are not guaranteed a minimum wage.
By including Fairness in the standard, the ROC places an equal importance on the human aspect of agriculture along with soil health, ecosystem stewardship and climate friendly practices.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), based in Florida where 90% of the tomatoes produced in the US during the winter months are grown, is one organization that has been fighting for fair wages and decent working conditions for farmworkers. CIW has brought to justice those responsible for modern day farmworker slavery, and brutality and sexual harassment in the fields. They have negotiated with some of the largest fast food chains to increase the pay of Florida tomato pickers to raise them above sub poverty wages. Lucas Benitez, the founder of CIW, spoke at the Bioneers Conference about the Fight for Justice for Farmworkers.
J.I. Rodale, an organic farming pioneer and founder of the Rodale Institute, in the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening wrote, “In the soft warm bosom of a decaying compost heap, a transformation from life to death and back again is taking place. Life is leaving the living plant of yesterday, but in their death these leaves and stalks pass on their vitality to the coming generation of future seasons.”
The process of composting is a form of biomimicry. Nature ultimately and systematically breaks down and decomposes all life’s substances transforming them into a resource for new growth. Composting creates ideal conditions to speed up that process and produce a high-quality input for soil and plant health in the farm and garden.
John Wick of the Carbon Farming Project – which demonstrated the role that compost plays in sequestering carbon in the soil – says, “When making compost, if you create the ideal conditions, naturally occurring bacteria populate that pile. They’re already there. They start building their bodies out of those ingredients and through their respiration, it gets warmer and warmer and warmer. Then only thermophilic bacteria can tolerate the high heats and in that environment, weed seeds and pathogens are destroyed.
“When you make thermophilic bacteria-based compost, you create a beautiful molecule, a little carbon-nitrogen molecule covered with life, and it turns out when you put that compost on top of the soil system, the soil knows exactly what to do with it.”
Compost made from leaves, grass clippings, kitchen waste, manure, weeds, twigs, agricultural waste, etc. supports soil fertility, creates a good environment for beneficial soil microbes, suppresses plant disease and can be good for the climate. According to Dr. Whendee Silver of UC Berkeley, “Composting manure actually decreases greenhouse gas emissions. We’re measuring greenhouse gas emissions from the composting process; it appears that composting, if you do it well, leads to relatively low emissions compared to allowing the material to naturally decompose, which can lead to carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
“If you put the material into a well-managed compost pile and keep that compost pile turned – weekly turning is sufficient – that results in relatively low methane emissions and very low, undetectable emissions from nitrous oxide [a greenhouse gas more potent that carbon dioxide and methane].”
The Multiple Methods of Composting
The multiple soil health benefits of compost have been known since ancient times. Today commercially produced compost is available by the bag or by the truck load, but can vary greatly in quality depending how the compost was made and what materials were used. Were they exposed to noxious inputs that have not properly degraded like antibiotics in chicken manure or herbicides in green waste? Those things are difficult to know. However, with some trial and error, it is relatively simple, whether you are a gardener or a farmer, to make your own. There are several different methods of composting so the process can be adapted to different scales, uses and preferences. All methods, when done properly have similar benefits with some notable differences.
Thermophilic composting, which can be done on a small or large scale, is an aerobic process in which microorganisms consume carbon and generate heat that can kill weed seeds. Vermicomposting, usually done at a small scale in a bin, uses red worms that eat kitchen scraps and plant residues, produces nutrient and microbial rich castings that have similar benefits to thermophilic compost, but doesn’t kill weed seeds. Vermicompost, unlike thermophilic compost, has naturally occurring plant growth hormones.Depending on how the compost will be used and applied, the two methods have their pros and cons.
Compost Tea, researched and popularized by Dr. Elaine Ingham of the Soil Food Web Inc., is a process in which quality compost is brewed into a tea that greatly increases the beneficial microbial population so that relatively small amounts of the tea can be sprayed on large acreage to increase soil biology and fertility. Sheet composting, popularized by permaculturists, is a low labor method that is done in place in the garden bed. In this brief podcast, ecological farmer Bob Cannard explains how to do sheet composting.Biodynamic (BD) compost has specially made BD preps and herbs embedded in it that attract cosmic forces into the compost pile that help harmonize the life force and energies of the farm. The latest breakthrough on compost has been made by Dr. David Johnson, of New Mexico State University and CSU Chico State, who has developed a unique composting process that results in a fungal-dominated compost that his research has shown to increase crop yields and dramatically increase soil carbon sequestration.
Compost is the single most important amendment for organic regenerative gardeners and farmers. It increases the health of the soil, which promotes healthy plant growth. Composting is an ideal way to turn food waste into a valuable resource and composting animal manure and other waste reduces greenhouse gas emissions. And as a tool to mitigate climate change, compost increases the soil’s capacity to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
Grasslands, known by a variety of names – prairies, savannahs, steppes, pampas, etc. – are vast ecosystems throughout most of the world that support a diversity of wildlife. According to Andrea Basche of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “Grasslands provide protection against floods and droughts, have the potential to store carbon in the soil, and as a result, help increase overall climate stability.”
The distinct characteristics of grasslands – open, flat, treeless, with deep topsoil and high fertility – have made them victims of exploitation by unsustainable agricultural practices and over- grazing. Half of the North American prairies have been lost to agriculture and the loss continues at rates equivalent to the destruction of the Amazon. The trend of disappearing grasslands is global and with that comes the loss of wildlife habitat, ecosystem services and potential for climate change mitigation.
Zimbabwean ecologist and farmer Alan Savory developed holistic management to help heal the declining health of the world’s grasslands. Holistic management, based on mimicking the dynamics among grasses, ruminants and predators, is a framework for making decisions that takes into account the needs of the land, the animals and ecosystem functions. Timing, location, livestock density, grazing duration and ecosystem cycles are part of the complexity that is intensively managed by holistic ranchers on approximately 40 million acres worldwide.
Despite abundant empirical evidence of success on the ground, Savory has had his detractors who claim that his conclusions about carbon sequestration are not supported with scientific research. However, in the examples that I’ve read of studies refuting the effectiveness of holistic management, the research was not done on holistically managed systems.
Hunter Lovins, in an article in The Guardian refuting criticisms of Savory’s claims that properly managed livestock can be key to sequestering carbon to mitigate climate change, cites soil Scientist Elaine Ingham, The Rodale Institute and range scientist Richard Teague of Texas A&M in support of Savory’s concepts. A Michigan State University study also supports the idea that holistic practices like adaptive multi-paddock grazing “can contribute to climate change mitigation through SOC [soil organic carbon] sequestration.”
Most people don’t think of California as a prairie state, but the coastal prairies, which are rich in biodiversity and are classified as critically endangered, are found from Los Angeles to Oregon.
Doniga Markegard and her family holistically manage 10,000 acres on a number of ranches both north and south of San Francisco.
Doniga Markegard and Family
“Holistic management,” Doniga said in a presentation at the Bioneers conference, “is an approach to an ecological agriculture system that works with nature and focuses not only on the production and the products, but also on the environment and people while ensuring that it’s financially profitable. The basis of holistic management, first and foremost, is to define and know the environment that you’re working with. It really blends well with my background as a naturalist and wildlife tracker because first, we’re getting to know our environment, and only until we have a deep relationship with those species that we’re in this dance with, can we then apply our design and our stewardship.
“I love tracking large predators, not just because of the thrill, but also because we can learn so much from those keystone species. I spent seven summers tracking wolves in Alaska and Idaho; part of what I learned was the dance between predator and prey. When the wolves are in an ecosystem, there’s a trophic cascade where they are preying on the elk forcing them to move. Because of that constant movement away from the predator, the elk aren’t putting as much pressure on the riparian areas. As riparian areas flourish, songbirds and beavers come back. It’s all a beautiful orchestrated dance.
“Nature functions in wholes and patterns. What we’re doing with holistic management is mimicking nature to not only produce abundant food for humans, but for all life on Earth.
“With conventionally managed land, often the perspective is what don’t we want on the land and how do we get rid of it. In comparison, with holistic management we’re looking at what we are managing towards. We’re not saying, we don’t want this or that. Even if there is a species that’s taking over the grasslands, we don’t try to conquer it and get rid of it. Instead we manage for biodiversity. What are the things that you want to see on your land, like pollinators for example? Then you set up those conditions and they will come. Pollinators will come. Birds will come, and they’ll be thanking you for setting up the conditions that they can live and have their babies, and produce more abundance.”
As biodiversity increases, the landscape supports more life. Paicines Ranch, near Hollister California, is working to regenerate ecosystems on their 7000 acres while producing healthy food. Claudio Nuñez, of Paicines is noticing how nature is responding. “We’ve probably had a tripling of bobcats in the last two years. We’ve seen a fair number of eagles showing up, we used to see one once a week or so, now I’m seeing them two or three times a week. If given the opportunity, nature is very resilient. Watching how it responds is a fantastic feeling.”
Paicines Ranch
The key to holistic management and regenerative agriculture is healthy soil. Poor farming and ranching practices that dominate conventional agriculture, like plowing, leaving soil bare, overgrazing, chemical use, lack of cover crops, etc. are destroying the beneficial soil microorganisms that are the key to nutrient cycling. Today most conventionally farmed soils lack key nutrients that are essential for optimum plant and human health.
Holistic ranchers manage land to increase soil organic matter, 50 % of which is made up of carbon. Carbon supports life in the soil and increases the soil’s capacity to hold water making it more resilient to drought and erosion. Carbon rich soil allows rain and irrigation water to infiltrate rather than run off and erode precious topsoil. For every 1% increase in organic matter an additional 20,000 gallons of water per acre can be stored in the soil.
One of the ranches that Markegard Family Grass-fed manages is the Jenner Headlands Preserve on the Sonoma Coast. “When we got there,” Doniga said, “it had been ranched conventionally. By using planned grazing, bunching the animals up and mimicking what nature would have done with the large herds of elk and pronghorn being moved by wolves, we were able to see an increase in perennial bunch grasses, an increase in diversity, an increase in water stored in the soil which means an increase in carbon.
“How is this done? The ultimate biological farming unit, whether you like them or not, whether you eat them or not, they are amazing. Cattle can help us with the next phase of healing the planet, as long as they are managed well and taken out of the feedlots and allowed to live a life that they are designed to live. They are ruminants. They mow the grass by eating it. They have incredible horse power. They have a carbon converter fermentation vat. They’re mulching. They’re fertilizing out the back end, and they’ve got all these great microbes in their gut that are directly linked to the microbes in the soil.
“Always plan for the health of your animals. They need a larger area to graze so that they can have a diversity of nutrients from different plants. The pastures have a longer time to recover because you are moving the animals from one area to another. You match your moves with how rapidly the forage is growing. When the forage is growing fast, you want to move your animals faster so that you can feed when the grass is sweet just before it matures.
“Grazers have a symbiotic relationship with the species of the grasslands. The animals create an impact on the land as they move around that encourages green plant growth. Asregenerative agriculturists, we’re farming light. We’re maximizing the leaf surface of green growing plants to capture more carbon out of the atmosphere. That carbon is what feeds the plants. The green plants have the protein that the cattle need.”
Cattle have been identified as significant climate change contributors because they emit methane when burping and farting. Methane is roughly 30-80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon. The vast majority of livestock are raised in systems that damage the climate. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) confine thousands of animals inhumanely to a small industrial space. CAFO animals are fed grains, which are hard for ruminants to digest and cause them to produce even more methane emissions. The enormous amount of waste that CAFOs produce is typically stored in anaerobic manure lagoons that emit carbon, methane, ammonia and other toxic gases. Conventional grazing operations often result in overgrazing and a degradation of the ecosystem’s ability to store carbon and regenerate.
Richard Teague found that when cows grazed in adaptive multi-paddock systems, like holistic management systems, grasses grow with a higher nutritional quality and can be digested more quickly which lowers the amount of methane emitted. Under proper management, according to Teague, much more carbon is sequestered in the soil than is emitted by the cows resulting in a net climate mitigation. As it turns out the consumption of meat, now justifiably accepted as a climate change culprit, can actually be part of a climate change solution if the animals are raised in a system that uses nature as a model allowing animals to enjoy their natural life habits, which will increase biodiversity and sequester atmospheric carbon in the soil.
For too long women in general and women of color even more pointedly have been told to suppress their grief and rage in the name of love and forgiveness. No more. How do we reclaim our emotions in the labor of loving others? What might authentic reckoning, apology, and transformation look like, personally and politically, and where would they ultimately lead us?
Following is a transcript of a conversation between four extraordinary writers, activists and thought leaders of our era: Terry Tempest Williams, Eve Ensler, Valarie Kaur and Nina Simons.
Terry Tempest Williams, one of the greatest living authors from the American West, is also a longtime award-winning conservationist and activist, who has taken on, among other issues, nuclear testing, the Iraq War, the neglect of women’s health, and the destruction of nature, especially in her beloved “Red Rock” region of her native Utah and in Alaska.
Eve Ensler, Tony Award-winning playwright, performer, and one of the world’s most important activists on behalf of women’s rights, is the author of many plays, including, most famously the extraordinarily influential and impactful The Vagina Monologues, which has been performed all over the globe in 50 or so languages.
Valarie Kaur, born into a family of Sikh farmers who settled in California in 1913, is a seasoned civil rights activist, award-winning filmmaker, lawyer, faith leader, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, which seeks to champion love as a public ethic and wellspring for social action.
Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist, is also co-founder of Women Bridging Worlds and Connecting Women Leading Change.
VALARIE: I am deeply grateful, deeply grateful to be here in this moment next to these. They are my sisters, they are my godmothers, they return me to the fight.
I look at you, and I see how you’ve moved through this world, and I want to last like you. And I want to know how. This is my question to you: What has made you brave enough in these years to keep showing up with love despite everything anyway?
EVE: People like you. Really. I think of you. I think of the magnificence of you and the younger generations, and we don’t dare give up. What will we say to the people who come after us? We are all a chain of evolving humanity, and if we quit, it doesn’t get to go on. That’s just that. But also, I’m of the Beckett school: If I can’t go on, I must go on, I will go on. And why not? The alternative is not going on, and that does not seem appealing.
Also, I am here because of my sisters. I am here because I am in a community of Bioneers, I’m in a community of One Billion Rising, I’m in a community of V-Day, I’m a community of activists, of sisters and brothers all around the world, who have made a commitment that is bigger than me. It’s not about us. I’m old. I’m done. And I’m okay with that. But my commitment is to life; it’s to something much bigger than me. And I think once you get hooked to that thing, that bigger thing, then it isn’t about you anymore.
So you’re in pain, so get over it. So you feel sad, so get over it. Get connected to the bigger thing.
And I just want to say one other thing: There’s a woman named Jane who is my inspiration. She’s at the City of Joy in the Congo. I met Jane nine years ago, and Jane suffered some of the worst violence I’ve ever heard of on the planet, and I’ve heard a lot of violence – raped, and her insides were destroyed. She came to a hospital for five years, went back to her community and got raped even worse, tied to a tree for a month, almost died, was impregnated by soldiers. I’m telling you this because it’s a public story. When I met Jane nine years ago, she was broken, and her body was broken. She was in the hospital eight years, undergoing nine operations. Today, Jane is literally a Bodhisattva. She is a light. She is the light. She’s one of the leaders at City of Joy. She lifts up the other women. Her life is devoted to the health and welfare and radicalization of her sisters.
I look at Jane, and I think, ‘What fucking problem could I possibly have?’
I really hold her—I have a picture of her. I have pictures of her all over, because she represents to me what happens when your light gets hooked up to the divine. It’s just not about you anymore. It’s about taking that poison and turning it to medicine, taking that pain and turning it to power. And I think the way to go on is to get hooked up.
TERRY: There are days when I wonder how I can get up in the morning. And you must feel that too. In those days, I’m aware of the limits of my own imagination. But what I have learned is that imaginations shared create collaboration, and in collaboration we find community, and in community anything is possible. That’s how I go on.
I agree, it’s not about the individual, it’s about the community, both human and wild. Most of my life I’m feral. And when I can’t contain myself, I howl. To me, joy is a sibling of grief. And it is parented by love.
NINA: When my mother was dying, I reached a point where I knew that I needed to be held in community. So I would come home from my mother’s house at night, and I would write these letters, and both Eve and Terry were on the receiving end of them. I didn’t need answers back, I just needed to know that they knew what was going on in my life. It was such a gift to know that that net of connection, that web, was there for me, and that these magnificent women were helping hold it. That’s how we get through.
VALARIE: We are each other’s midwives.
NINA: Yes, exactly. Midwives and hospice workers.
VALARIE: It made me want to share this with you. This word love, which is on our lips, and it’s also such a triggering word. I feel like culture has butchered this word. And when I am thinking about what we’re talking about, I come back to this word. I’m a lawyer, so I never use the word love in public. They’re going to eat you alive if you talk about love when you’re trying to fight the good fight.
My daughter is 11 months, my son is 4 years old now. The moment that he was put on my chest, I had that rush of oxytocin. It’s a falling in love. Most of the time when our culture talks about love, they’re talking about that rush of feeling, being swept away, and it’s delicious, and it’s delirious, and it’s what we live for. It’s glorious. And it’s fleeting. And it’s something that happens to you, right? We fall in love like we fall into a jar of honey. It’s something that happens to you if you’re lucky. That’s our only definition of love. Then we are told that love is the most important thing in our lives, and yet it’s something that we have little control over. No wonder so many of us are so anxious about what it means to love.
What would it mean to expand that definition? I didn’t know until this weeping, sobbing, shaking feeling, that rush and falling into love. I looked over at my mother, who had been my midwife this whole time, and she’s unpacking her back, getting ready to feed me. And I realized like my mother had never stopped laboring for me.
My mother had an arranged marriage when she was 18. She and my father decided, “Our daughter is not going to have this kind of life; she’s going to be able to be free.” I thought I wasn’t supposed to be like my mother, and all this time she was showing me what love actually is. Love is more than a rush of feeling. Love is sweet labor. It is fierce. It is bloody. It is imperfect. It is demanding. It is life-giving. And it is a choice that we make over, and over, and over again.
It’s not just one feeling, it’s all the feelings. Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger is the force that protects that which is loved. We need to move through all of these emotions in the labor.
So I want to ask you about rage, because you touched upon it. You talked about how rage is the site for healing, that perhaps we move through the rage to find healing. What do you do with your rage?
TERRY: For me, it’s always through action. What is the gesture? What is the action shared?
My brother took his life a year ago. Dan Tempest. He was a beautiful human being, an artist, a philosopher. He loved language. He was a working man. He worked the frack lines in North Dakota. He worked in our family business. He also banded migrating birds.
Three months before he took his life, he called me and said, “I bought the rope.” And we had a conversation. He said, “I’m eroding. I am eroding. And you are in denial.” And he said, “I’m fucked. You’re fucked. The Earth is fucked. You have to wake up.”
And I just said, “Dan, I will never give up on you. I will never give up on the Earth.”
The last thing he said to me was, “I’m going under. Knock if need be.” I never did.
I realized in those moments, it’s not the big gestures. You know, we think we can save a landscape, a species. I’m haunted by what if I had just knocked. The small things, the small gestures. We would have held each other.
EVE: Rage is such an interesting thing. I was filled with it for so many years, and it was such a motivator. It got me to do a lot. It compelled me, and compelled me, and compelled me. But it has a particular energy that is not always kind, not always inclusive, not always aware. It’s got a very specific trajectory. And I don’t like that anymore. I don’t want to be ruled by rage anymore. It doesn’t sit well inside me.
I don’t think we can deny rage, but I think the transformation of rage is really critical. What I do with rage is I write. What I do with rage is I dance. What I do with rage is be more generous than I thought I could be. I push it further. I give more. I give more. I give more, go past that point.
The other night I was with my dear friend Pat Mitchell, whose book Becoming a Dangerous Woman just came out. We were talking about what it means to be dangerous. Being dangerous right now is loving. That is really the most dangerous thing we can do. And by that, I mean really loving, really giving to people, really seeing people, really experiencing everyone around you and tuning in to their suffering or their needs or their trauma or their feelings. Being loving, to me, is really about not hoarding.
We have a terrible tendency on the left which has been conditioned into us, I think, by deprivation rations, by capitalist programming, by a competitive paradigm. We think that if one person gets something in our movement, it’s going to take away from somebody else, even if we’re all fighting for the same issues. To me, loving and being dangerous is saying, “Here, have it. Take it. We all get to have it. I’m going to support you completely and totally, even if I have jealousy, even if I have competitive feelings. Actually, the more I have of that, the more I’m going to give you.”
I used to have a rule for myself: If I ever was jealous of my women friends for their success, I had to buy them a present. So for a period of a year, women were getting lots of presents from me. It retrained and retaught and reprogrammed that part in myself that always thinks, ‘If she gets it, I don’t get; if she moves ahead, I don’t; if she rises up, I fall.’ It’s completely a lie. When your sisters rise, you rise. Period.
NINA: I’m inclined to add that I’ve been wrestling with a question of anger for a long time. I felt like I grew up in a household in which it wasn’t safe to express anger at all. I grew up thinking, ‘Okay, well is there something healthy about anger that I can wrap my heart around? What does that look like?’ My best clue so far comes from a woman named Karla McLaren, who wrote a book called The Language of Emotions. She says that anger is your body’s way of telling you that a boundary has been trespassed.
I find that I’m more interested in outrage than in rage. As women, we have had so much conditioning to not express anger or outrage. But we live in a world where babies are born with over 200 exogenous chemicals in their bodies from birth. If that’s not trespassing a boundary, what is? And we should have all been out on the streets about that a long time ago.
I feel like I’m in this inquiry about: How do we reclaim healthy outrage? Because it’s part of what can fuel us into the action that’s so needed.
VALARIE: I resonate with that. Growing up in a Punjabi household, I learned how to suppress my rage. To be good, to be loving, meant to not be angry. My mother was very sad for many years, but it was just rage turned inward. Oftentimes it would come out in a flash of rage over things that don’t matter. Watching my mother on her journey actually gave me permission to start to explore and unleash the rage inside of me. Because when rage is turned inward, we know that it wreaks havoc on the body.
I experience an encounter of sexual assault when I was a kid, and for many, many years, I had a lot of dysfunctions in my body, in my pelvic floor. I didn’t know how to solve them. I went to every kind of doctor until I met a mentor, Tommy, who worked with trauma lodged in the body as much as in the mind. He helped me imagine that moment when the assault took place, and becoming a tiger. So I started growling. I roared. And before I knew it, in my mind, I was ripping into this boy’s body. I was letting myself experience violent, even murderous rage inside of myself.
Afterward, I said, “Tell me what happened.” My mentor said, “Well, where is your assailant?” And as the tiger, I sniffed the floor. There were just bloody clothes on the ground. I looked up, and there he was. But he wasn’t this monster who had power over me. He was a frail, wounded kid, whose parents were dysfunctional, whose father was an alcoholic who beat his mother. He, himself was so wounded. He didn’t know how to love. I could see his wound only after going through my rage and letting it run its course. I could reclaim the fight impulse in my own body.
What Tommy did is he gave me a safe container for my rage. And once we have safe containers for our rage, then maybe what’s left over is the kind of outrage that you’re talking about, Nina, that allows us to wonder again about the people who hurt us. What are the cultures and institutions that authorize them to hurt me?
EVE: That’s beautiful.
A few days ago, I moderated this incredible panel in New York on why we should care about Brazil. There were beautiful people on this panel – Caetano Veloso and Glen Greenwald and Petra Costa, who’s made a beautiful film called Edge of Democracy that everybody should watch. There was a woman named Celia Xakriaba, who’s from the Xakriaba tribe. She’s one of the leading Indigenous women fighting to protect Indigenous People and the Amazon. She wrote me this week, and she said, “When we marched on the Capitol, we didn’t have guns. We didn’t have anything that the opposition had. What we had was our singing. Our singing was so strong that we went into the Congress, and they couldn’t stop us.” And I just feel … have a power in us—I’m going to say this as women—that we haven’t even begun to tap into. We have a power in us that we don’t even recognize yet, I’m promising you.
Between the years of rapes, the years of burnings, the years of undoings, the years of oppression, our power has been pushed down and pushed down. But it is beginning to emerge. When this power emerges, it is so much more powerful than violence. It is so much more powerful than guns. I promise you, when this power emerges, we won’t even recognize this world as we know it.
Our goal now is to unlock the obstacles that are preventing that power to come through in each and every one of us. We have to be bold now.
They danced and sang their way into Congress. I have seen this all over the world with One Billion Rising: women dancing their ways into situations they never dreamed they could get into, because our power is in our bodies. It’s in our bodies. And when we untap, untangle, uncap all those things that have been put like stones, like boulders, like meanness on top of ourselves, I promise you, we will know where we’re going. We will know the way, and we will know how to get there. So the work is to get your bodies free.
NINA: I want to ask you what authentic reckoning, apology, and transformation might look like personally and politically? Where will they ultimately lead us?
VALARIE: I do believe that revolutionary love is the call of our times, that the only way that we are going to confront the racism and patriarchy and white supremacy and capitalism and greed and hate and the white nativist forces that are rising in America, and the supremacist movements that are rising around the world, is if we show up to the labor. The only way we will be able to show up to the labor and last is if we show up with love through love. Love for others, love for ourselves, and love even for our opponents, which is the refusal to dehumanize them.
I believe that the only way we can practice love is in communities and pockets, and when we do that, we experience what we’ve been experiencing here. We experience the world that we want. We feel it in our bodies. I have felt it in my body, this sense of community and transparency and bravery. That’s the world that we’re birthing. We get glimpses of it when we create pockets of it large enough for us to inhabit and occupy it together.
TERRY: I have two images. If I’m honest, what the reckoning looks like for me is to stay home. Years ago I wrote a sentence: The most radical act we can commit is to stay home. That’s the reckoning for me. No more flights. No more distractions. But to really do the work in our own communities, with the gifts that are ours, whether it’s working in local schools, whether it’s restoring the lens where we live, and really working on that local scale.
Each of us has gifts that only we can do, that we can offer up in the name of community, as a piece of this larger mosaic at this moment in time. We have to really ask ourselves in the deepest humility: “What is my gift? How can I go deeper and offer it up in the name of community?”
EVE: I think we keep going at them. We keep using their tools and their language and their energy to go at them, and we’re always going to lose on those terms, because we’ll never be that greedy, we’ll never be that mean, we’ll never be that thoughtless, we’ll never be that cruel. What’s calling me lately is how do we go under? How do we really figure out how we’ve gotten here? What’s been done to people that have driven them to do the things they’ve done?
I had the privilege of working at Bedford Correctional Facility for eight years in a group with long-term women prisoners who had done violent crimes. Those women really educated me. Every week they would go deeper through writing to really investigate why had they done what they’d done. I’ve just never been with people who were so honest and so real.
What I learned in that process is that nobody’s ever really thought about their lives. Life has just happened to people. Then they wake up one day, and they’re in a marriage, and they don’t know how they got there. Or they’re in a jail cell, and they don’t know how they got there, or they’re in a job, and they’re like, “What am I doing here? What happened?”
I think part of what we have to do is really think about our lives. How do we get here individually? How do we get here as a community? And how do we get here as a country? And we have to start really making amends.
I hear white people say all the time, “Well, I’m not responsible for the people who came before me.” And I always want to laugh and say, “We’re responsible for everything. We are responsible for everything. Period.”
What legacy runs through you that you have to make amends for? What story has gone through your cellular makeup that you need to clean up?
I also think we have to go above, and by that, I mean we have to go to the mystical. We have to go to the divine. We have to open the next pathways through plant medicine, and through all kinds of plants that will take us to another zone. I can only share my own experience that I think the journeying and doing plant medicine has been the most profound experience of my life. It has opened the pathways to another dimension. It has allowed me to see myself in ways I could not see myself standing here. It has opened my heart beyond any capacity I thought it could open.
I feel blessed that plants brought me to the Mother, that plants brought me to the vine, that plants taught me who my real mother is. I know who my mother is now. We all have a mother. And she is sacred, and she is generous, and she is patient, and she is merciful.
I think the Mother made us. We’re her creations. Why would she want us destroyed if she created us? She wants us to change. She wants us to be the children she wanted us to be. That’s what she’s calling us to do. She’s an old, divine, loving entity that created all of this. And it’s our job to cherish her, to protect her with our lives, to go the distance so that we get to all be here in a new time, in a new world, in a new transformation.
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