My sister is the botanist.  I love working in our garden, but when I have questions, she is the one I turn to. In light of this reality, I am not one to typically pick up a book about trees! Trees are necessary: for the environment, for many products that most of us enjoy, for shade in the hot summer, for colourful autumns, for adding life to concrete worlds. I can sense all this. I know it is true without needing to read 368 pages written by a scientist. Yet, after hearing several friends talk about the world of trees and mentioning some good reads, I decided to make the plunge. It was well worth the effort. I will never look at a tree the same way again!

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Canadian Suzanne Simard, is a challenging, delightful, sober, and eye-opening foray into plant communication and the intelligence of the natural world.

Born in 1960 in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia into a generational family of loggers, Simard grew up roaming the old-growth forests with her siblings, forests that gave her a sense of well-being and a secure place in the world. Logging was a way of life, but it was a sustainable style of logging – low impact and select – rooted in the ways of Indigenous peoples. During a summer internship for university students, Simard began to realise her understanding of the forests was not the same as the perspective of the logging industry. The solid rejection of her tentatively offered suggestions for solving problems and the personal challenge of being a young knowledgeable female in a male-dominant world helped launch her ensuing journey of discovery.  Finding the Mother Tree is as much a personal growth memoir as it is a developed case study on how trees form communities and communicate.

Passions so often spring from early life experiences and Simard’s passion for the forests is no exception. I loved reading how intuition, gut feelings, keen observations, and pure love for the trees and forests propel her forward. Simard literally digs her way into her growing understanding of the underground fungal network taking place among trees and plants.  Always asking questions, forever probing, refusing to be dissuaded by dissonant negative voices, this scientist / ecologist demonstrates the resilience necessary to push possibilities into permanent change.  I also greatly appreciate Simard’s recognition that her achievements are only possible because of a community of kindred spirits, others that assist, believe, encourage, and mentor her all along the way.

Simard’s story climaxes with her discovery that the older trees of a forest, each the centre of a ‘tree hub’ linked together underground, are “mothering” the trees around them.  They are protecting, feeding, communicating, and preparing these “children” for survival. As the author clearly states:

“The scientific evidence is impossible to ignore: the forest is wired for wisdom, sentience, and healing.”

Walking through the woods near our home, I can’t help but look for these mother trees and the nearby seedlings, the children, growing up under such intimate care.  The forest dynamic speaks of cooperation more than competition, living systems more than living single units, codependency more that isolated individualism.

It seems to me that humanity has much to learn from the forest!

Mary, Nov 2021

Photo by Ron Otsu on Unsplash

Recent Posts