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If I had to choose one book to keep with me this would be it. I spent six years listening to the audio book because each chapter, each paragraph really, is transformational. I'll likely start the book over again on paper, and read the young adult version. It's a religious experience. It offers a new way to live that is so against the grain that you need to read and reread to keep shifting into this new mindset.

Every chapter is important but the last is so so relevant to today's fascist world.

What's amazing is that it's not framed as spiritual or self-help, although I can see that other reviewers felt the same way I do about it being a spiritually transformative experience. Kimmerer is a scientist, an indigenous scientist with a wide lens, and the book is chock full of scientific observations and surprising, beautiful facts.

In a way this is about wandering in the woods like Mary Oliver. It's also a mythological text. It's also a reflection on what it means to be an indigenous academic, or to be indigenous at all. It's also a review of her academic and personal life's work. It's an exploration mainly of the U.S. natural world. It's delicious description. It's an environmentalist's handbook.

It's also incredibly soothing to listen too. I kept coming back to listen to the next chapter when I wanted something that felt so true I could melt into the words.

This book has permanently changed the way I think about the world. It made me so overwhelmed with emotions that at times I had to set down my phone and cry for a few minutes. But it is beautiful. It is poignant and important and it has given me renewed hope for a world that is increasingly terrifying. 

The book is useful, accessible, and affirming. I'm sure it's needed but all the trans autistic kids I've met already know this stuff. It's a bit like, grown ups catch up on the internet, and in that way is more for grown ups or maybe for teens who have very restricted internet usage.

Still, it's the good stuff, the cream skimmed off the top, from the mess of internet they navigate everyday.