An Herbarium as Resistance
On Emily Dickinson and Archiving the Anthropocene
Letter fourteen
February 2, 2025
Dear Reader,
We’ve reached the halfway point between winter solstice and spring equinox—a wild, dark season that feels like the in-between of everything.
The trees are still bare, but buds grow quietly on the cherry and dogwood branches in the grove. The sap is slowly rising.
In the morning, the air smells of wet earth. Birds sing erratically, spasmodically—as if the song is urged out of them more and more each day.
This is a time of finding hope and resilience, even in the bleakest of times.
I want to wax poetic, but everything feels especially heavy lately. The in-betweenness of the season mirrors the moment—a country navigating a time of change, where the challenges we face feel more layered and complex with each passing day. The fragility of the natural world, the fractures in our communities, and the uncertainty of what lies ahead—it all feels entwined.
Lately, I find myself wondering what it means to be connected to this country right now —what it means to feel rooted in a place, to embody a sense of care for it.
What does it truly mean to embody the spirit of America?
This is a question that certainly stretches beyond any single perspective. It is woven from generations of voices—Indigenous knowledge keepers who tended this land before America was named, Black poets and writers who documented the complexities of an evolving nation, the early settlers and immigrants who built lives in unfamiliar landscapes. These different histories all shape the American spirit.
I look to my bookcase—the poems, stories, and histories of those who wrestled with these same questions.
I think back to some of the early American poets of the 19th century — poets like Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, and Dickinson—how each mirrors a different facet of the evolving American psyche.
But what they all shared, despite their differences, was a deep devotion to the natural world. It’s a thread worth pulling on.
Recently I’ve found myself returning to Emily Dickinson. It all started a few weeks ago—on a cold January day, I stumbled upon a copy of The Envelope Poems by Dickinson at a secondhand bookshop and found myself drawn in—not by the polished versions of her rhythmic poetry we know, but by the immediacy of her scribbled drafts. They remind me of my own pages—messy and alive, full of half-finished thoughts—words crossed out.
My curiosity led me deeper into her life, and eventually, to her herbarium—a sixty-six-page collection of pressed plants bound in leather with an embossed ivy-green floral cover. Across its pages, Dickinson mounted more than 400 specimens, carefully labeled with their botanical names in her tiny neat handwriting. These plants were gathered from woods, meadows, and the borders of springs—places she explored often.
Botanists call this fieldwork. For Emily, it was an act of devotion.
Her collecting cast a wide net across the natural world—pressing plants gathered on long walks through meadows, forests, and along springs, as well as from her own garden. Emily Dickinson was a gardener, tending to her flower garden for much of her life.
Flipping through the pages, I recognized plants familiar to me—ones I see in the field, like Symphyotrichum novae-angliae (new england aster), and ones I grow at the farm, like Calendula Officinalis (calendula).
I later found that one of the plants she pressed, Castilleja coccinea (scarlet paintbrush), is no longer found in Massachusetts. What once grew wild in the fields and meadows of her home state has disappeared due to environmental shifts and habitat destruction.
This is not an isolated loss. Wildflowers are in decline across the country. Shifting climate patterns, development, and agriculture have altered the landscapes where these plants once thrived. The native wildflowers Dickinson knew so intimately are disappearing. Each loss unravels the thread in the intricate web of pollinators, soil health, and biodiversity that sustains life itself.
What should have been a common practice—learning the names of plants, documenting their forms, preserving their beauty—feels, in today’s world, like a radical act of resistance.
In a time when species are disappearing, ecosystems are being fragmented, and the natural world continues to be increasingly seen as something to be controlled and exploited, this act of honoring what remains—feels deeply subversive.
It’s a quiet act of resistance against the forces that seek to erase our landscapes.
I started creating my own herbarium this winter. It’s a little ritual, but it feels like a way to honor what’s here, to name what's here, to remember it.
As Dickinson wrote, to “hold a jewel in my fingers”— and turn it into “an amethyst remembrance.”
Creating a herbarium is an act and a ritual of remembering. And yes, an act of hope in a time when hope feels scarce.
Each time I press a flower, I’m reminded that these small rituals—naming, noticing, preserving—are not just acts of memory, but acts of hope.
In the face of uncertainty, perhaps this is what devotion can look like: the small, deliberate ways we honor the world and care for the places we call home.
Perhaps to embody the American spirit is to root ourselves in these acts of care
—to love this land deeply, even when it feels fragile, even when it feels impossible.
This has been the free version of my newsletter, and I’m so grateful to everyone who’s joined the paid version, A Gardening Year.
Each month, I’ll share reflections like this one. For those looking for more, A Gardening Year offers hands-on tips and seasonal ideas.
Here’s what’s coming up for paid members in February:
How to create your own flower press, materials I’m using for my herbarium practice, plus a list of flowers that are good for pressing throughout the year.
A love letter to pansies, growing them as cut flowers, plus tips on starting them indoors.
All the slow-growing annuals and perennials I’m starting by seed this month.
Your garden to-do list for mid-February to mid-March.
And more.
Until then, I hope this season brings you moments of rest, calm, and curiosity.
Love,
Rowen
P.S. See full scans of Emily Dickinson’s herbarium here.
I also really love this personal anecdote of Emily Dickinson from a friend of the family:
“She received me in a little black hall that connected the kitchen. It was dimly lighted. She asked if I would have a glass of wine or a rose. I told her I would take a rose, and she went to the garden and brought one to me. She was very unusual, and her voice, her looks, and her whole personality made an impression on me that is still very vivid after all these years”
I love picturing this encounter and seeing myself in her in some ways — I admire her unforgiving authenticity. Sometimes, I like to think that Emily was a fellow INFJ, like me.
A book: Virginia Woolf’s The Waves
A film: Gint Zilbalodi’s Flow
A podcast: Eckhart Tolle: The Paradox of Order and Chaos
A poem: In the Name of the Bee,” by Pádraig O’ Tuama
A practice:
stay with the stillness of winter
pay attention to the small changes around you
light more candles than necessary —a nod to the returning light
This was a delight. I just brought home a botanical book this weekend to learn more - it does feel like an honoring way to be in the world 🤍
Thank you for the peace you offer.
As records are being erased, I am gathering with neighbors…we started a group document as a way of recording the happenings in our little ecosystem: when the first hummingbird returns, the rains, soil health, the yellow Dandelion tops.
Sending love across our Asheville ridges.🌱Katharine