In this creation story, the Earth is made of gifts and gratitude. And perhaps that is what the Earth continues to ask of us today. Gratitude for all that we have been given.

Gratitude may seem like weak tea given the desperate challenges that lie before us, but it is powerful medicine, much more than a simple thank you. Gratitude pulls us into relationship with other entities, reminding us that our very existence relies on the gifts of others. Gratitude calls us to acknowledge the personhood of all beings, from maple trees to snapping turtles.

And gratitude is humbling, an antidote to the arrogance of our time. It reminds us that we are just one member of the democracy of species. It reminds us that the Earth does not belong to us. Indigenous story traditions are full of cautionary tales about the failure of gratitude. When people forget to honor the gift, the consequences are always material as well as spiritual. The spring dries up, the corn doesn’t grow, the animals do not return to the ones who neglected gratitude. The western storytelling tradition is strangely silent on this matter, and so we find ourselves in an era when we are rightly afraid of the climate we have created.

This human emotion has adaptive evolutionary value because it engenders practical outcomes for sustainability. The practice of gratitude can, in a very real way, lead to self-restraint, to not taking more than you need. Gratitude is most powerful as a response to the Earth because it calls us to reciprocity, to the act of giving back.

The next step in our cultural evolution—if we are to persist as a species on this generous planet—is take to heart Skywoman’s first lesson and be living expressions of gratitude to the earth.

Each summer, I teach at a remote wilderness field station in the Adirondacks, forming a community of scientists and students, surrounded by intact ecosystems where it is abundantly clear that the land and other species are the sources of our knowledge. We may think we’re learning about them but, in fact, we are learning from them. One of our best teachers returns every summer, just after the summer solstice, clambering her way up a steep bluff from the lake, under cover of darkness, to lay her eggs in the warm open sand of our volleyball court. With powerful, bear-like paws, she flings the sand aside, digging furiously. Her sharp snouted mouth, open and gasping for breath, she rests for a minute and digs some more with fierce maternal commitment and utter disregard for the students who surround her, snapping photos as eggs, like leathery ping pong balls, leave her body. When she has covered them safely, she entrusts them to the Earth and makes her way back to the water.

As predictable as the solstice, she comes every year. We know her by the little notch marked in the edge of her shell. There’s lots of sand on the lake, hundreds of good places for a snapping turtle nest, but for some reason, this one chooses to bring her offspring to us. Our students are thrilled, of course, to be witnesses; it is a highlight of their field biology summer. But they also want to play volleyball. So the herpetology class carefully unearths the eggs, and with loving care, take the eggs to another site they have prepared and measured to be sure it’s a good place to incubate—warm sand, safe from predators, so the snappers will hatch.

As Skywoman will attest, snapping turtles have been here since the beginning. They are ancient beings who walked with dinosaurs. Snapping turtles are long-lived solitary beings. Basking with their shells floating in the sun, they leave the water only to lay eggs and can make extensive overland journeys to find just the right spot—like our volleyball court.

This year, on the very next day, there was another mother in just the same spot. That had never happened before. The next day, there was another. And another. One day, there were two—one basking right on the welcome mat of the camp headquarters. In all, more than a dozen snapping turtles came among us, in as many days. A deluge of turtles.

As scientists, we were asking, “Why? Why did all of these turtles come to us in unprecedented numbers?” When our students went to find suitable transplant sites for the repeated batches of new eggs, they found one answer. The usual sandspits were underwater. The students wandered around with thermometers trying, in vain, to find good places. The exposed sandy banks, which were usually dry and sun-warmed, were now cold and wet. Unusually heavy rains this year had flooded their usual nest sites. As the lake level rose, they had to seek out higher ground. The snapping turtles had become climate refugees.

But here’s the thing that haunts me. There are lots of sandy places on our lake. Why our wholly artificial rectangle of sand? Why would reclusive, solitary beings struggle up a rocky bluff and walk into a community of 100 scientists? Why did they come to us, to do their most important thing, not hidden, not covert, but as if demanding to be the center of attention?

Shouldn’t we be paying attention when the turtles head for high ground and wander among us with a kind of desperation? When, at their most vulnerable, they come to us? There are many ways to ask “Why?” and many ways to answer. Science, as a way of knowing, armed with models to predict the coming changes and thermometers to seek out refuges, is a powerful tool for addressing climate change. But it is not the only one. Which is why a scientist stands here before you—yes, listening to the indisputable data, and listening to a message carried by snapping turtles. The ones who carry the Earth upon their back, walking into our midst with a message we reach to understand.

I think the Earth asks more of us than gratitude. The Earth asks that we give our gifts in return so that the world can continue. This is the message carried by those turtles. They are asking us to remember the covenant of reciprocity, they are asking us to honor an agreement: that at the beginning of the world they were our life raft, and now, so much closer to the end, we must be theirs.

Turtles among us. How do we respond to their urgency when we sit at a tipping point on climate when our plant and animal relatives are disappearing? It can no longer be business as usual. It’s no longer a matter of small acts of stewardship, not enough to tenderly move the eggs from one place to another when there are no more places for them to go. Not enough to write praise songs for turtles, not enough to study the hormones that turn all the eggs to males when the temperature rises, not enough to write a regulation to manage lake levels. The Earth asks us to use our considerable gifts in return for all we have taken. We need a movement, made of equal parts outrage and compassion. We need voices raised in a mighty shout on behalf of Turtle Island.

And so it is, on the banks of the Hudson, another turtle walked from the water, looked at the resting canoes, looked at me, and nodded in approval. Some of those canoes began their journey in a small creek in the territory of the Onondaga Nation, where the story of Skywoman is also remembered. But the Onondaga were not paddling alone. We paddled in two distinctive lines, one of indigenous paddlers and one of their allies. We paddled in two rows to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Two Row Wampum, a treaty document whose beads recount an agreement between the original peoples and the newcomers of how we shall live together, sharing the River of Life which carries both the native canoes and the settlers’ ships. It is an agreement to respect one another’s sovereignty, while caring for the gifts of the Earth. It is an agreement that both peoples will protect the River of Life.