A friend recently shared an article about Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver.
Simard, as part of her doctorate thesis, demonstrated that some trees, which often grow together in the wild, trade nutrients.
Essentially her research challenged the notion that scientists have traditionally held, that forests are a collection of individual trees competing for resources…
Instead, she argued that they are complex, interdependent communities, connected by an underground network of fungi known as mycorrhiza, through which nutrients are exchanged.
The scientific journal, Nature, published her findings in 1997, and used it as a cover story under the headline The wood-wide web.
(Brilliant isn’t it?)
I first encountered Simard when I was studying an elective called Meditation for Connecting with Nature…
We were asked to watch her Ted Talk from 2016 – Nature’s internet: how trees talk to each other in a healthy forest…
It’s just shy of 20 minutes – but well worth the watch.
Some members of her profession almost laughed her out of the room on first hearing her findings.
She talks about how other scientists labelled her work ‘a dog’s breakfast’.
Now I know first hand that academia can be brutal…
Especially for women.
But she stood her ground, knowing her science was solid.
Maybe now we’ve made some progress…
In 2021 she published her book Finding the Mother Tree… this review of that book is truly sensational.
“This is science in action, from beginning to end, and so much more than a study published in a journal.” – Tiffany Francis-Baker.
When Simard was diagnosed with breast cancer – her family and friends rallied around her.
In a similar way to how she was able to show the forest trees working together to support each other.
I hear her when she says: “Most of us have forgotten that we’re connected to each other, and to nature, that we are one.”
And that’s the key, she says, to dealing with climate change…
It lies in our relationship with nature.
I love this whole idea of connectivity.
Mutual dependency.
Reciprocity.
The trading of mutual respect.
We look after nature…
Nature looks after us.
We are a key part to the whole circle of life.
Equal with nature…
Not superior to it.
It’s something very close to my heart and I’ve written about it before…
No doubt I’ll write about it again in the future!
As Suzanne Simard says: “Once we understand that we are deeply part of nature, really part of nature, not separate, then we can become part of the great strengthening, that positive trajectory. We have to stop treating nature as our shopping mall, and once we do that we can change the arc of the future.”
Ann 🙏