I am in a hotel room. It’s civil twilight, just before dawn. The day of the wedding, the air is cool coming in the open windows, the sky as it lightens looks clear. This morning at 10 we will drive up to the reservation to start the visiting process.

When I crossed the Columbia yesterday and pulled off the road at the horse monument (yesterday’s posted photo) I could smell the sage brush. It’s a smell I find incredibly welcoming; I felt welcomed, like by a relative. It’s exactly the same feeling I get when I run across a friend I haven’t seen in ages, that quick glad burst of happiness, the sense of familiarity, belonging, family.

In anthropology, thinking of the non-human world as your relations is called fictive kinship. I’ve always felt a quick stab of irritation at the world that lies behind that term. I mean really, you think I don’t know that the very many different kinds of sagebrush or rabbitbrush or yarrow comes into being through a different process than human beings do? What the term fictive kinship does is establish the value system of the namers as primary and in that process it ignores the value system of the named.

When someone says “badger is my sister” she isn’t confused about who actually fell out of her mother’s human womb, she is saying that what it means to be a sister has nothing to do with coming out of the same womb and everything to do with how we behave to each other and what responsibilities we have to one another. Kinship for some people is not about biology. It is about relationship and behavioural expectations.

A term like sister-in-law, or step-son prioritizes biology. Terms like these originate in a cultural world that needs to establish biological kinship to enable practices of primogeniture. That is, it was once critically important for a land owner to know who his biological son was so he could correctly pass on his wealth at his death. Kinship terminology like daughter-in-law reflects that value system even if we no longer live as deeply inside its social mores.

So I cross the Columbia and my naming practices take a sideways step. And so, Hello Sagebrush! Damn but you smell good. Yes, it’s long-lost me Buckbrush! Care to share some leaves? Nice crop Elderberry! Wow, Rowan! Looking good! Stars Serviceberry, have you ever grown! Hey! Oregon Grape! You been drinking acid rain again? You’re looking a little like you been through the wars. Mugwort! Is that really you? Holy cow, someone stomped you but good! Going to be here next year? Yes. Oh good. See you then.

BTW, Fred Bentler has a lovely site with some really nice picture of plants from Eastern Washington.