Cultivating the Three Sisters
A possible solution to creative burnout
Fernando* stood on the concrete porch of the carpentry shop, his mouth open, his upper teeth extending outward like jazz hands from an otherwise mellow face.
He was always in that spot, every morning, his work-worn, sun-baked fingers hooked onto a humble white mug, steam rising from his coffee like a revenant from a warmer, soupier era. The grey dust which had taken up residence in the creases of his fingers told the story of his connection to the land with a dry humor characteristic of an alpine desert.
“Kwira,” he addressed me with a slight upward nod of the chin, revealing a stubby pencil stored behind his ear. His gaze was fixed beyond me, as is social custom for the indigenous Raramuri of Northern Mexico.
“Kwira, Fer,” I responded, pausing on my way to the one room schoolhouse. Nothing was ever rush-worthy here, in a sleepy valley three hours southwest of the provincial cowboy city of Chihuahua, where machismo and cattle ranching competed with blocky concrete construction for cultural prominence. I stuffed down my American tendency to blather on at a breakneck pace and waited for his response.
So strong was my urge to fill the silence that I had to fill it in my head instead, telling myself to wait, to be patient. After three years living among the Raramuri, the slow, spacious interactions still felt deeply awkward to me.
“It’s cold,” he finally noted.
“Yep, it is,” I replied, jumping on his words like the eager American puppy that I was. “And pretty windy.”
Pause. Pause. Pause. Pause. Pause. Pause. Pause.
“But a good day for planting. We’ll see the kids at the field?” Fernando answered with an uncharacteristic string of words.
“Yes, we’ll meet you over there in a bit.” I smiled and continued toward the school where I worked as a Montessori guide, teaching three to six year-olds everything from how to write in Spanish to how to make tortillas.
Montessori education, implemented well, reflects the culture of the place where the children live. The school building feels like a cozy home in which children learn life skills interwoven with phonics and mathematics. Which is why, for the students in my school, it was unsurprising to be heading out on a crisp Spring morning to learn about la siembra, or planting, from Fernando - an experienced cultivator of the benevolent Three Sisters: beans, corn, and squash.
When planted together, as they have been by indigenous North and Central American cultures for millennia, the Three Sisters support each other in many ways. The cornstalk acts as a pole for the beans to climb. The beans inject nitrogen into the soil, an essential component which provides plants with energy to grow and produce fruit. The bean vines protect the corn from destabilizing winds, while the huge, prickly squash leaves provide shade and help keep the soil moist while discouraging the growth of weeds and deterring would-be pests.
So the plants, cultivated together, create the conditions for optimal plant growth, even in the unforgiving, high alpine desert where I lived. But they also provide nutritional benefits for humans that surpass other Eurocentric methods of farming, such as monocropping:
Nutritionally, maize, beans, and squash contain all nine essential amino acids. The protein from maize is further enhanced by protein contributions from beans and pumpkin seeds, while pumpkin flesh provides large amounts of vitamin A; with the Three Sisters, farmers harvest about the same amount of energy as from maize monoculture, but get more protein yield from the inter-planted bean and pumpkin. This largely explains the value of the Three Sisters over monoculture cropping, as the system yields large amounts of energy, and at the same time increases protein yields; this polyculture cropping system yielded more food and supported more people per hectare compared to monocultures of the individual crops. - agronomist Jane Mt. Pleasant
But there was more to the Three Sisters planting than healthy crops:
The Iroquois preferred to plant the three crops together, since it took less time and effort than planting them individually, and because they believed the plants were "guarded by three inseparable spirits and would not thrive apart.” - Mt. Pleasant
All of this got me thinking, after reading Austin Kleon’s piece, Idea Gardens, where he explores various gardening analogies for creative practice.
One that stuck out to me was the notion of creative crop rotation, whereby you cultivate a single creative “crop,” which will inevitably deplete the soil after using its energy to produce creative “fruit.” In agriculture, you can’t just plant corn in the same spot over and over again and expect a healthy crop. In creativity, the idea is that you switch from one creative pursuit to another once you’ve used up all your energy on a particular project.
Having experienced an intense period of creative burnout in the past year, I was all ears for a way to replenish my soil.
Rather than viewing the arc of our creative practices as starting with a seed and ending with burnout, I was curious about taking inspiration from the Three Sisters. What would it look like to rotate my creative interests on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis? I wasn’t envisioning paint-while-dancing-while-knitting; the Three Sisters don’t shoot up simultaneously. They grow at different rates and provide support and protection for each other at various times in the growing season, displaying a natural give-and-take.
What would happen if I regularly cycled between my three main creative interests (which, right now, are drawing, writing, and music)? Would I lose focus? Would I feel unmoored? Would I be totally unproductive? Or would I feel like a pawn in the culture of productivity?
Like many of you, I was encouraged to specialize at a fairly young age and thought that flitting about from interest to interest was somehow “less-than”.
THIS IS NOT TRUE. (At least for me!)
What I’ve found these past few months of cultivating my three interests at the same time is a rush of energy and creative freedom that I haven’t felt in a long time.
It’s made it easier to begin projects. It’s made it easier to continue projects. I’ve actually been very “productive” in terms of putting in the practice. My skills in all three areas have grown, and one creative “crop” doesn’t wilt while I’m tending to the other because I don’t leave it without watering for months (or years).
Now, there’s still the need for my Three Sisters to lay dormant in a “wintering” period, a la Katherine May. I’m currently in a very Summer-like creative state, so I’ll get back to you when I feel Winter approaching. I can imagine this could look like a time of rest, of reading, of focusing solely on my family, taking a retreat, etc.
I’ll leave you with these questions:
What are your Three Sisters? How can you plant together, and watch them nourish each other - and you - simultaneously?
What if you don’t need to accept the pressure of focus, and instead allow your mind to move from one creative impulse to another, more regularly?
What if the nutritional content of your creative output is greatly improved by the intermingling of your interests?
What if doing all the things you love is actually easier than sticking to one, or one at a time?
Fernando handed the three seeds to one of my keen young students who was missing two front teeth.
“Like this?” the little one asked, dropping the seeds in the grey, hungry soil.
“Like that.” Fernando smiled.
After a long, pregnant pause, he added, “That’s how it’s always been done.”
I’d like to add the agricultural analogy of the Three Sisters to Austin’s list. Tending to various creative pursuits in tandem can result in a robust, healthy creative output, minus the expectation that after a hard push, a singular creative pursuit can deplete our energy. Crop rotation assumes depletion, and I think the companion planting of the Three Sisters has something to teach us.
*I’ve decided to change the names of my friends in Mexico to honor their privacy.
My student, who is now an adult.