From sacred roots to flying rivers, a journey through biomimicry, connection, and the rhythms of regeneration.
The Biomimicry Institute – represented by Miranda Berger, Andrew Howley, Lily Urmann, Kat Sitnikova, and myself – attended the 36th Bioneers Conference in Berkeley, California, the last week of March. Bioneers is a confluence of ideas and brave voices creating a sustainable future. And those two words – bioneers and biomimicry – are a portmanteau and a compound noun that uses life as its start, value, and axis.
Bio is indeed the prefix used to mean life – from the Greek: βίος – for a variety of uses.
And in this present moment of flux, these life-affirming and life-orienting words are vital to tackle the challenges we have present today. To be able to go to Bioneers on my first month leading AskNature, felt like the right push for what’s to come with our work at the Institute and how we want to move AskNature to inspire and connect in more ways than ever before.
Throughout the conference, the Institute hosted a series of events: a nature walk, which you just heard a bit from facilitated by local naturalist Richard Hasegawa and our Chief Editor, Andrew Howley, we all led a panel on bringing biomimicry into action, and even guided a meditation visualizing life as another organism, just to name a few.
Throughout the days of the conference, outside of our sharing own work, we heard advancements on cetacean communication and the rights of nature as we continue learning to understand their linguistic and natural cultures from CETI’s David Gruber and fellow Colombian, the MOTH’s César Rodríguez-Garavito. We heard reflections on the emergence of a reignited sacred relationship building with nature from Atmos’ Willow Defebaugh, and even understood our worlds and the future we are co-creating with other species as interdependent with the humor and storytelling that only Baratunde Thurston could bring.
The conference also paid homage and had representation of the first and oldest human bioneers: our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Corrina Gould, the tribal spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, reminded us of how to root ourselves in hundred-year old trees, to be under their wise shade, and put our backs to it, thinking of what has come before. To look at bees and remind ourselves of all of our ancestral tasks, the responsibility we have with the Earth, and how we are to cross pollinate understanding our impact.
A keynote by our own Janine Benyus, really encapsulated how nature’s genius can guide us toward a regenerative and resilient future. Because nature’s generous and we are biological beings.
Nature is our beginning and end. It keeps its promises every Spring. Nature heals from trauma even more resiliently after experiencing it. Nature is reality, we are not separate from it. What we see on the news, what we are feeling—this is not normal. And we know so, because there are norms being transgressed. Natural ones, in which there’s sacred attention and intention, in which there’s balance, a give and take, and adaptation. Rather than the take-make-waste paradigm we find ourselves in, we should be taking care of one another. We want to snuggle for existence rather than struggle for existence, to foster a culture of care.
Windward, what protects, stays.
Leeward, what needs, flourishes.
Ecosystems, life, nature, are generous—what the Amazon creates as aerosols, goes airborne, and gets transported. Flying rivers permeate and migrate across multiple countries all the way to the Sierras. Nature is source, measure, and metric. And by heeding its needs and understanding our part in it all, we can bring some joy in our lives by adopting the resonance and rhythms of it all. By taking the time to pause and adapt, and take strategic steps in order to regroup and know what to do next and where to focus our energy, we will be able to be of better service. By acknowledging and accepting the cascades of grief and loss that are ongoing and natural from a moment like this we will become more regenerative and full in the process.
What’s the story that needs to be told right now when we stop to take a moment to breathe in? I think we need to attend to life, but also to tend to it. The dignity and sovereignty we encounter in what emerges, returns, and then: we remember. We are life. We are nature.
And here at the Biomimicry Institute, we will continue inspiring solutions, engaging our Hive, and support and engage an ecosystem of hopeful initiatives.
And we won’t forget to keep asking nature, while nature is asking us back:
Fellow friends and Earthlings,
we are nature embodied.
We are aspects of one another.
Don’t forget then, we depend on each other.
Camilo Garzón is the AskNature Program Director at the Biomimicry Institute, where he leads the platform, program, and publication efforts to expand access to nature-inspired innovation. His diverse body of work spans various disciplines and media, and is dedicated to amplifying underrepresented perspectives in science media.
Learn more about Camilo, and the rest of the Biomimicry Institute team here.
