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    The ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ Author Wants Us to Give Thanks Every Day

    The world is a gift, not a giant Amazon warehouse, Robin Wall Kimmerer said. In her new book, “The Serviceberry,” she proposes gratitude as an antidote to prevailing views of nature as a commodity.Every summer, the botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer takes a group of students on a two-week field trip deep into the woods and bogs of the Adirondacks.For their final exam, students prepare a feast from foraged plants, dining on a wild menu of boiled cattail kebabs, roasted rhizomes, stir-fried day lily buds, lichen noodles in a gelatinous broth of boiled rock tripe. For dessert there are serviceberry and cattail pollen pancakes, smothered in pine-scented spruce needle syrup.Before digging in, the group recites the Thanksgiving address — an invocation within Indigenous Haudenosaunee communities that gives thanks to the earth and its abundance.“We start the class with a Thanksgiving address to share our sense of gratitude for the plants, and we end the same way,” said Kimmerer, a professor of environmental biology at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, who is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. “So we learn about the gifts of plants and how to receive them.”Kimmerer often says that plants have been her teachers throughout her life. As a little girl, she stashed shoe boxes of pressed leaves and seeds under her bed. Later, as a young botanist, she studied the mysteries of moss reproduction. Throughout her decades of research and environmental advocacy, as she’s pushed to bring Indigenous knowledge into ecological conservation work, she’s learned about the delicate web of relationships between plants and their surroundings.Now, as a renowned plant ecologist and best-selling author, Kimmerer is teaching millions of people how to learn from plants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Robbi Mecus, Who Helped Foster L.G.B.T.Q. Climbing Community, Dies at 52

    Ms. Mecus, a New York State forest ranger who worked in the Adirondacks, died after falling about 1,000 feet from a peak at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska.Robbi Mecus, a New York State forest ranger who led search-and-rescue missions and became a prominent voice within the L.G.B.T.Q. climbing community, died after falling about 1,000 feet from a peak at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska on Thursday. She was 52.Her death was confirmed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, where she worked for 25 years.Ms. Mecus, who worked mostly in the Adirondacks, searched for and rescued lost and injured climbers facing hypothermia and other threats in the wilderness. Last month, she helped rescue a frostbitten hiker who was lost in the Adirondack Mountains overnight.At age 44, she came out as transgender, she said in a 2019 interview with the New York City Trans Oral History project. She then worked to foster a supportive community for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning climbers in the North Country of New York.“I want people to see that trans people can do amazing things,” she said in an interview for a climbing website, goEast, in 2022. “I think it helps when young trans people see other trans people accomplishing things. I think it lets them know that their life doesn’t have to be full of negativity and it can actually be really rad.”Basil Seggos, former commissioner of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, called Ms. Mecus a “pillar of strength” and a tremendous leader for L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights, noting she was “always there” for the most difficult rescues and crises.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More