Brother Snow. Sister Rain. Auntie Sunshine. Uncle Cloudy. Grandfather Cold. Grandmother Warmth. Cousin Storm. Mother Earth. Welcome to the family of weather — our kin.
Ecological understanding is about wholeness, knowing that the earth — as a whole system, organism or being (what many call Gaia) — comprises diverse, interdependent beings (or organisms, if you prefer) that live together and support each other in a web of reciprocal relationships. Much of science has come to understand this pretty well for at least 50 to 100 years; Indigenous peoples have known this for thousands. Weather is an integral part of the genius that is the living earth.
In recent years, “kinship” has been used more and more to describe the entangled relationships of our world, especially to help us humans understand that we are as much part of this ecological web — as both givers and takers — as any other form of life, that indeed all of life is our kin, that we are kin to all of life. In fact, in the past year, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gavin Van Horn and John Hausdoerffer, under the auspices of the Center for Humans and Nature, have edited a five-volume book series with the overarching title Kinship. But, again, this is nothing new: For centuries, many Indigenous peoples have said some version of “all my relations” or “we are all related” in their greetings, prayers and thanks, acknowledging that the ultimate expression of humanity is our oneness with all of creation.
Our animal creature kin range from the unseen microbe up to the charismatic megafauna (such as bison and elephants). But our relations include every manner of life, including plants and basic elements. They also include systems, such as waterways, forests and prairies. And so to my point — weather is also our kin.
Weather consists of three simple but fundamental things — air, water and sunlight (or energy, if you prefer). Without those essentials, life simply wouldn’t exist. In its simplest systematic terms (forgive me, meteorologists), weather is just the behavior of air and water moving around, powered by sunlight. But from an ecological perspective, we are enmeshed in weather simply by virtue of our existence. And therefore from a kinship perspective, weather is our relative.
The ecological consequences of a kinship perspective can be significant. For a long time, many humans, especially in the Western world, have considered themselves separate from, even superior to, the rest of the earth. This attitude has led to the mindset that the earth is for our use and exploitation, that nature is a “resource” for our comfort and consumption. And that attitude is the root cause of today’s ecological problems: pollution, climate instability and catastrophe, mass extinction, desertification, you name it.
An ethic of care — which Aldo Leopold in the 1940s called a “land ethic,” extending the community to all that lives — is needed for us to be in right relationship with the rest of the living world. A sense of kinship with all that lives — and genuine acts of “kinning,” as Kimmerer, Van Horn, Hausdoerffer and others would say — can lead to that care for the world we need to practice.
This kind of kinship certainly calls for a major attitudinal shift among much of humanity today. We often see our lack of kinship in everyday attitudes toward weather. We’re coming out of winter, which bears the brunt of most anti-kinship attitudes here in the Midwest, though there will be plenty of sourpussing in the coming seasons as well, as many start to complain about heat and humidity.
Many treat “bad” weather as a personal affront, an inconvenience or a comfort feature of a living space that has been denied to them. Weather is not akin to a swimming pool in an apartment complex or a nice view out of a west-facing window. And it certainly isn’t trying to make you miserable or disrupt the ease of your planned day. It can certainly do those latter things, but much of that misery or disruption often derives from our attitude or relationship — not the weather itself.
As with the human kin we care about, what we need to do is reasonably accommodate ourselves to, not fight against (because you can’t) or fling hatred at, the weather. Most of the time, at least in a stable environment (more on that in a minute), the weather is doing what it needs to do: being providential. That is, providing for life on earth, including ours. The snow, cold, warmth, sunshine, clouds, rain and wind are providing the temperature regulation, cycles of moisture and varied climates that grow our food, create a habitable home and give us beauty. Weather is about our existence, our flourishing on a beautiful planet, not our convenience.
A couple of important caveats. First, yes, weather is sometimes destructive. Tornadoes, hurricanes, torrential rains and drought, for example, are weather phenomena that cause damage and loss of life. That can’t be denied. But second, our non-kinship attitudes toward the earth, including weather, are what have caused such destructive storms to escalate, to become even more frequent and out of control. Some say you can’t change the weather, but we already have — for the worse. And we have it in our power to at least slow the climate damage we’ve caused and, if we were truly kin to the earth, to stabilize and over time reverse at least some of the catastrophe of our own making.
Kinship’s companion posture is gratitude. How can there be anything but thankfulness for what gives us our own life and the multiplicity of life around us? And that has to include our air, water and light, and that has to include how they move around to provide what is needed for life.
No one’s asking you to compose a poem while shoveling snow, perform an interpretive dance in below-zero weather or share a candlelight dinner with high humidity (though you should do any or all of those things if you want to). In our everyday lives, we all sometimes get frustrated at seemingly endless cold snaps and heat waves, snowstorms in April and day after day of clouds and rain. But even then, we need to relate to weather in the only proper way: as our kin (even when it annoys the heck out of us), and with humility and gratitude rather than arrogance, anger and even hate.
Thomas Dean knows that crazy Uncle Tornado will visit this spring, but he admits he doesn’t want him to. This article was originally published in Little Village issue 304.
