As a long-time gardener, I freely admit to being initially attracted by the book’s title, one of at least half-a-dozen names for a sturdy and often underrated native shrub that grows in a surprisingly wide range of North American climatic and soil conditions.

But knowing the breadth and depth of anything Robin Wall Kimmerer puts into writing (like her phenomenally influential BRAIDING SWEETGRASS of a decade ago), I also realized that THE SERVICEBERRY would range far beyond the natural world from which humanity has become so dangerously disconnected. And I haven’t been in the least disappointed. If anything, I’ve been unexpectedly challenged by the expansion of ideas I thought I understood.

For a charmingly small and beautifully designed book of under 120 pages, THE SERVICEBERRY packs both vast and intimate thoughts between its covers. That includes plentiful monochrome drawings by John Burgoyne that speak as powerfully as the author’s poetic prose.

"For a charmingly small and beautifully designed book of under 120 pages, THE SERVICEBERRY packs both vast and intimate thoughts between its covers. That includes plentiful monochrome drawings by John Burgoyne that speak as powerfully as the author’s poetic prose."

While there may be nothing factual that Kimmerer --- an Indigenous Potawatomi teacher, mother, botanist and environmental activist --- hasn’t spoken or written about previously, the power of this book lies in its extended analogy between the cyclical life of the versatile Serviceberry bush (another common name is Saskatoon) and the many natural environments in which it grows and interacts with native flora and fauna.

In fact, the context for Kimmerer’s own interaction is a reflective afternoon of harvesting ripe Serviceberry fruit, a process that requires respectful and unhurried hand labor out in the bush, where the best berries grow wild, not farmed for productivity and efficiency. And that’s where the core meaning of Serviceberry ecology lies --- not in relentless wealth-producing excess, controlled by a few with the power to artificially create scarcity, but in nurturing natural abundance that becomes reciprocal through sharing.

The seasonal life of Serviceberries, like that of numerous other native plants and trees, supports a circular economy in which every participant simultaneously contributes and benefits. Among Kimmerer’s many examples are birds and animals that eat the berries for nourishment and return to nature what they don’t need through their excrement, which plants Serviceberry seeds far and wide.

Where humans miss the point is that the earth’s natural abundance is not meant for hoarding or translating into more currency and/or supply than people need. In THE SERVICEBERRY, we are all challenged to imagine and reframe our lives in a more circular form that reconnects us with the original sources of our sustenance --- not merely what it takes to survive as a species, but to thrive without decimating the planet and without maintaining gaps that now exist between people who “have” and those classed as “have nots.”

Of course, this is a difficult concept to enact in the midst of a society obsessed with gathering more and more “stuff,” thanks to illusory fears of scarcity, the driving force behind consumer capitalism. But if the only enduring idea we take away from a first reading of this book (you’ll want to read it again) is the radical notion of being content with enough, that in itself would be a huge step in a more just direction for the entire human race.

Indigenous lore from numerous First Nations cultures teaches that there is enough for everyone when we step beyond narrow-focused individuality and live in a more reciprocal connection with one another and with nature. THE SERVICEBERRY eloquently reteaches that fundamental truth to the 21st century.