I WENT TO BUY A BOOK FOR YOU, AND FOUND SO MUCH MORE…

The nest, Wilderness Wood

August 2024 - Racist riots break out throughout the country. We’re due to bring a group of young people from the city to the countryside for a peaceful camping residential. How do I reduce harm when it is everywhere?

”I wanted to purchase a copy of Braiding Sweetgrass for you all. To share quotes aloud to make you think about reciprocity and nature and our reason for stepping out of the city into the wilderness”, I write in my journal.

I didn’t have much time before our camping trip, so I looked online to check where I could order for next day delivery. I thought of how Jeff Bezos flew that rocket into space just because he could, I thought of how much it cost the Earth to power that unnecessary flight of fancy. Not only the chemical fuels but the fuel of labour of underpaid and exploited staff worldwide. The petrol and diesel oil and cobalt batteries powering the vans delivering each item at a rate we have grown so used to, because we cannot fathom waiting more than 48 hours for that thing we saw formulated out of 1’s and 0’s moments ago emanating through blue light and pixels. I sat on the top deck of a bus exiting out of my browser and returned my phone back into my pocket.

A bookshop. If there’s anywhere I can get a book fast, it’s a bookshop!

On this 321 bus journey to New Cross Gate station I passed an independent bookshop. It looks relatively new, maybe just over a year old. Maybe they would have a copy, I had 11 minutes until my train, why not have a look? 

The shopkeeper guided me to Robin Wall Kimmerer, her book staring straight at me, the braided sweetgrass image glowing shades of green atop a white background. I picked it up and thanked my guide. Fingers trailing over spines of its neighbours, and they stopped as my heart sung out, “THAT ONE!”

“Gathering. Women of colour on nature”. I had heard Jasmine Isa Qureshi give a talk only a few weeks prior and read from their essay included within its pages. This was coming with me too.

“The beautiful rolling hills and coastlines are for all of us. Together, we can reimagine the British countryside (and all it represents) and make space so that everyone is welcomed." GATHERING

How fitting that I would find something to share with young people from this collection of essays, one piece by a Muslim author celebrating the reciprocity between people and tree in Islam, amidst far right Islamophobic and racist violence erupting through the nation. As we seek to nestle ourselves amongst the trunks and under the canopy of Sweet Chestnuts in the countryside in a country that is actively trying to expel us and erase us and brutalise us. 

How fitting that I should find solace in these pages and find them in a shop on the very streets where 47 years ago antifascists showed up in their thousands to shut the national front far right hooligans down. As counter protestors showed up arm in arm to protect the asylum seekers and nationals who were born black or brown and Muslim or Hindi or Sikh and resting on these lands and these shores. Under trees that saw their ancestors trade and traded. Trees in conservatories and orangeries and plantations and botanical gardens and arboretums marvelled and revered and exploited and commodified for clout and prestige. 

Image captured at “The Battle of Lewisham 13th August 1977”

We must stand as trees in a forest and let our roots ground us into a soil that we nourish and protect. And let us compost and rot the hate and the systems of separation and disgust. Let’s stand tall and move anchored and un-breaking. 

From left to right Hasan Suida, Malaika Bain-Peachey, Maia Magoga, and Diva Garg embracing after the end of the Generator camp in Wilderness Woods 2024

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Notes from the Garden