Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

Magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting

ecology, culture, and spirituality.

As we look to an uncertain future, what does it mean to be of service? Our third story on futures

comes from scientist, best-selling author, an enrolled member of the citizen Patawatomi

Nation, Robin Wall Kimmer. As she harvest service berries alongside the birds, Robin considers the ethic of reciprocity that

lies at the heart of the gift economy.

The cool breath of the world off the wooded hills, displacing the heat of the day, and with it come the birds, as eager for the cool as I am.

They arrive in a flock of calls that sound like laughter, and I have to laugh back with a

same delight. They're all around me, cedar waxwing and catbirds and a flash of bluebird iridescence.

I've never felt such a kinship to my namesake, Robin, as in this moment when we are both stuffing our mouths with berries

and chortling with happiness. The bushes are laden with fat clusters of red, blue, and wine,

purple, in every stage of ripeness. So many, you can pick them by the handful. I'm glad I have a pail and wonder if the birds

will be able to fly with their bellies as full as mine. This abundance of berries feels like a pure

gift from the land. I have not earned, paid, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way.

And yet here they are, along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain,

gathering in towers of cumulonimbai.

You could call them natural resources or ecosystem services, but the Robins

and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full. Part of my delight comes

from their unexpected presence. The local native service berries, Amalankyre, Arboria, have small hard fruits, which tend toward dryness,

and only once in a while is there a tree with sweet offerings.

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