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In his attempt to provide an overview of his 30 years with Wild Ones and his own 93 years on earth, Tom Small, co-founder of Kalamazoo Area Wild Ones, will first of all offer some of his many reasons for gratitude—for the people, for their vision, and for theland as teacher. As Tom unfolds his understanding of what it means to “listen to the land,” he will focus on the quotation from Michel de Montaigne that he and his deceased wife Nancy (the
other co-founder of KAWO) emblazoned on the 1999 leaflet advertising the new chapter:
“Let us permit nature to have her way.
She understands her business better than we do.”
Tom will discuss why it is important to learn the stories that the land tells us—the process that Robin Wall Kimmerer calls ”Restoryation.” As he looks forward to the future, Tom will speak about the need for Wild Ones to broaden and deepen the original, founding vision. He will touch on implications of the
new science of plant intelligence, problems with the language that we use in our work, and all that we must now include and welcome as members of the full community. Tom will touch on the importance to the native-plant community of such movements as Land Back, Rights of Nature, Territories of Life, and Robin Kimmerer’s “Plant, Baby, Plant.” He will suggest that the native-plant movement needs to take greater care to avoid and resist the insidious legacies of colonialism and enclosure of the commons.
In brief, Tom will offer his thoughts about some of the wonderful strengths of the native- plant movement and Kalamazoo Area Wild Ones as well as the uncertainties and challenges we face now and in the future.
Tom Small, WMU emeritus Professor of English Literature, has devoted his retirement
to educating about the importance of native plants and natural landscaping. He is co-
founder of Kalamazoo Area Wild Ones and co-author of Using Native Plants to Restore
Community, now in its sixth printing. His recent essays include ”Regeneration: A Matter of Life and Breath,” “Soil: Begin with the Beginning,” “Mni Wiconi: Water Is Life,” and “The Practice of Satyagraha in a Time of Violence,” for Quaker Earthcare Witness, and “Gandhi’s Firm Grasp of Truth,” for the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace Studies in New Delhi, India. He’s currently writing a long essay on “The Commons and Enclosure: Their Nature, History, and Future.”
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Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane,Portage,MI,United States
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