The Serviceberry

Energy, giving and 'enoughness'

A serviceberry bush in flower in the Sierra Nevada.

I have a friend with an unusual superpower: Whenever she gives money to charity, somehow the universe gives something like what she just gave back to her — often within days. She never expects it, it just sorta happens.

This is a great example of good karma, of how the buoyant motion of a gift economy can lift up everyone involved in it.

Let me bring this into the natural realm. As many of you know, it is illegal to sell or even officially barter wild game in North America (unless you’re in Quebec, oddly). But you can give all you want. And you can absolutely give away or even trade things like mushrooms and edible wild plants.

I have always done this to some extent. It is a poorly kept secret of hunters and anglers that they give away a lot of their meat and fish in order to keep hunting and fishing. That packet of walleye or mallards you received lets the giver go out and catch or shoot more, allowing that hunter to continue doing what he or she loves so much.

Recently, I’ve started to give away a lot more than that. I gave my friend Alan almost half of the big buck I shot. I ground venison and made sausages and gave those to other friends less familiar with the intricacies of cooking deer. To my neighbors I gave away my black walnut snowball cookies and packets of dried wild blueberries. I’ve given lots of people lots of fish and meat and berries and mushrooms.

Even now that our seasons are all largely over, and I am still giving full bore. Why? Two reasons, one mechanical, the other metaphysical.

First, I have limited freezer space, and a limited stomach. I live alone, and only sporadically get to cook for people. Being solo, I am lucky enough to give myself quiet time when I need it, and during this time I can accurately guess how much of this or that I really need, or will be able to eat in a year.

Before, I’d hoard it. A special bird or fish or whatever — ivory king salmon from Alaska is a great example of something precious and special — I’d hoard within the recesses of my treasure trove like the Arkenstone… until it was a year old or more. And then its luster would have faded. But after my freezer failed, I am trying to live more in the moment, to appreciate the bounty of the seasons, even here in Minnesota.

But my reasons go beyond mechanical. I am paraphrasing a friend, but I feel something like joy when material energy flows from me into someone who is excited about receiving that material. Put another way, I am as happy to give away the fruits of my labor to people who are excited about receiving them as I am doing that labor in the first place, whether it’s making sausages, grinding burger, picking mushrooms or harvesting wild blueberries.

Again, why? Because I have finally reached a state of “enoughness,” where I have enough to get by nicely. Anything beyond that is, in a way, wasted on me and ought to go to someone else. I’m no communist: I want the power to choose to do this, not be forced to. But the sheer joy of giving has lifted me up so many times in the past year.

And like my charity-giving friend, it comes back. Not one day after I gave away all that venison, a reader who lives here in St. Paul messaged me saying he has some extra bluefin tuna and would I like some? A friend offered to take me darkhouse spearing through the ice. Another has extra truffles (!) to offer.

This sort of material energy flow is a primary thrust of the little book The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The metaphor is the serviceberry, a/k/a saskatoon or juneberry or shadbush. Amelanchier to those inclined to Latin. Kimmerer notes that a shadbush, or really any other berry bush, produces far more berries than it needs to perpetuate the species. And the plants live many years, producing so many berries for so many years feels a lot like a gift to the universe.

Other animals, us included, accept that gift and then, feeling the swell we all feel after receiving something nice, many of us pass it along, each in our own way.

Kimmerer’s main point is that in this time of not only peak capitalism, but peak ruthless capitalism, we all need something human and grounding and, frankly, selfless to balance all that out. We live in an isolated, consumption-oriented age, where we stare at our personal pocket oracles all day watching cats or plane crashes or dancing girls or people like me plating pretty food.

The simple act of putting the phone down, sitting for a moment to think about what you have enough of, or that you’re no longer using, and then keeping that momentum going by giving it away — to anyone, but ideally to a friend, neighbor or colleague whom you know would want it — is at once soul-lifting, community-building, and subversive to the over-consumption economy we all live in.

So pass on that book you’ve just read. Give your old, or single mom neighbor some of that nice stew you made, maybe from one of my recipes. Bake an extra loaf of bread for a friend. Buy a round. Invite everyone over for a fish fry. Share your serviceberry harvest.

The circular motion of gift giving among friends, colleagues and neighbors creates powerful, positive energy we all need. The people with the most stuff when they die aren’t the winners. The winners are the people who have touched the most lives.