There are many interpretive signs at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee that help connect visitors to the history of the location and to the past keepers of the land, the Cherokee people.

My favorite sign is taken from the Cherokee creation myth and tells the story of how some trees became evergreen, which keep their leaves and remain green all year, and some trees became deciduous, which lose their leaves in autumn:

Some Trees Obeyed

The Great Spirit made all the trees and the plants and the animals, and he asked them to stay awake and fast and pray seven nights, in reverence to the Creator. And the first night they all did, but the second night some fell asleep, and the third night, only a few were still awake: the holly, the laurel, the cedar, the hemlock, and some others. And the Great Spirit, the Creator, said that they would be able to keep their hair—their leaves—all year round. And he gave them special power to be medicine for the Cherokee people.

—Freeman Owle, Cherokee storyteller

The creation legend reflects the close and interconnected relationship the Cherokee people had with nature, with animals and plants. They understood that we’re an integral part of the natural world—not separate or superior to it.

In her classic, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, also acknowledges and celebrates our reciprocal relationship with the living world.

All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy—all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.

Whether based in legend or science, we will benefit—on an individual, societal, and planetary level—to live in greater harmony with nature and take advantage of its transformative power.