THE FIRST BLADE OF SWEETGRASS

While hunting for summer’s sweetgrass, a young Wabanaki girl learns patience from her grandmother.

It’s Musqon’s first time to gather sweetgrass, and she’s excited. Her grandmother will use what they gather to make the baskets she will sell the following summer. As they walk together through the salt marsh, her grandmother explains, “It’s important to remember that we never pick the first blade of sweet grass we see. If we never pick the first blade, we will never pick the last one,” ensuring the sweetgrass will endure. But in Musqon’s excitement and haste, she pays no attention and grabs the first grasses she finds. With patience and love, Musqon is encouraged to think of how her ancestors had looked for sweetgrass. She learns to slow down and identify the different grasses until she recognizes the “sweet hay smell that was in her grandmother’s basket room.” As she considers what she has learned that day, she realizes that “perhaps next summer she could teach her younger sister…to pick sweetgrass.” Greenlaw (Houlton Band of Maliseet) and Frey (Passamaquoddy), a basket maker himself, pen a tender ode to a treasured tradition. Muted illustrations rendered in pastels on brown paper evoke the coastal Maine landscape and fit nicely with the tranquil pace of this lyrical tale.

Quiet text shows how careful observation and the respect of nature can provide unexpected gifts.