Looking for lively discussion with nature enthusiasts? Join the EFM Book Club!

For our inaugural event we'll be reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants and discuss how its message ties into the mission of EFM and how we can cultivate a relationship with the natural world.

Books are available for purchase through Darwin & Co. - pop into the museum to pick up your copy during operating hours or order it online to be shipped to your home.

Date: 10/14 • 7pm-8pm

Price: $10 a ticket, includes two slices of pizza and canned soft drink or water.

Location: Quarry Grounds Cafe or Outdoor Veranda, weather permitting. Museum galleries will not be open.

Book Link and Description: Braiding Sweetgrass

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings―asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass―offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.