Finding the Mother Tree: A Reading Report for the New Moon 🌑
This book isn’t about the change we want, it’s about the change we need. Deep, soul-shifting change that can motivate a person to upend her life repeatedly over an entire career and still decide the sacrifice is worthwhile....
Fourteen years ago this month, I followed the call of the wilderness and moved to Alaska. When I arrived, it was a vacation spot with magnificent views and exotic animals like bear and moose. I also expected to see how human progress unfolded in “the last frontier.” That Anchorage is home to one of the largest cargo airports in an increasingly globalized economy was not lost on me. I knew human migration to Alaska was changing it, and I was ready to be a part of the change.
What I did not expect was for Alaska to change me instead. Now I joke that the land has taken hold in my bones. This is not just a metaphor. The average age of the cells in our body is 7-10 years. In 14 years, I have regrown most of myself twice, Alaska soil mixing with my own molecules. I’m part Alaska! I’ve gone from admiring the mountains through an office picture window to organizing my days around having my feet on the trails and my hands in the dirt. The more connected I am, the more I want to be.
As I’ve embraced that journey–and the urge to express it through writing–I’ve been a little surprised to share the road with a lot of retired scientists. That is partly a consequence of finding those connections at events attended mostly by Alaskan retirees. Alaskans typically love the land more than most, and these are the folks who have opted to stay despite its unique challenges for aging folks. So, no big surprise there.
What surprised me is that the natural world is also transforming them in new ways. People from my background (religious conservatives) and from the science community have been at odds for years, of course, but recent conflicts over vaccines and climate change have politicized and polarized those perspectives even more. You might expect us to find common ground when one group concedes the other is right. Instead, we are finding common ground that is new to ALL of us because we are ALL transforming our perspectives. Deconstructing old beliefs isn’t just for exvangelicals.
Interacting with the more-than-human world is a spiritual experience for me, but I’ve received so much relevant insight from works by scientists who are also changing the way they see. I’ve written to you about how the world of botany is being turned upside down by recent revelations in the way plants perceive and act. Even more exciting is the way it is teaching us better ways to interact with each other. That’s why, for this month’s new moon reading report, I chose a book about how trees changed a life, Finding the Mother Tree by forestry scientist and conservationist Suzanne Simard (pronounced suzANNE simARD).
You might recognize her name. If you’ve heard about anyone “discovering” that trees communicate and share nutrients with one another via a mycorrhizal network made up of microbes and fungi, her name probably came up. (“Discovered” is in quotes because many cultures never forgot. It is our dominant and dominating culture that needs the re-discovery.) You might have heard people refer to this concept as the “Wood Wide Web.” Well, she’s the scientist behind it, and Finding the Mother Tree is her memoir.
In her 60s, Simard has enough life behind her to see the influence of her work among trees bearing fruit in her own life. It is truly a memoir, with all the twists and turns of life, from love and marriage to death and grief to health and relationship crises. The catalyst in almost all of those changes is her insight about tree behavior (yes, I use the word intentionally) and her fight to help the world understand. Trees uprooted and replanted her over and over again.
When I learned trees communicate and share resources with one another, it made so much sense of what I see in the world around me. My own deepening connection with trees was the reason I read about trees to begin with. Simard’s breakthrough validated a perspective I already embraced. But I am not a scientist. I don’t have to prove this way of seeing and knowing to anyone but myself. Simard does not have that luxury, and the book is a story of how something that feels simple to me broke her world as she tried to fit it into a scientific paradigm. It shattered many of her professional relationships, uprooted her career, and… well, I don’t want to spoil too much, so I’ll just say it disrupted pretty much every aspect of her life.
We have learned to fear what disrupts. I know that has been my experience. The thought, “I cannot unsee this because it is so deeply, irrevocably true,” quickly finds itself surrounded by opposition, discord, and then doubt: “This can’t be right if it’s causing so much turmoil…. Can it?” Simard’s book is about the hope that you learn when you pursue what you know in your bones only to find yourself facing deliberate attempts to silence and discount your wisdom.
I will spoil a bit here: The memoir does not have a conventional happy ending. The cultural and political forces she faces are formidable. Bad things happen to her. I’d venture that her life now would be much more comfortable in most of the ways our dominant culture values if she had abandoned her pursuit. Unfortunately, trees are worse off than they were nearly 30 years ago when she showed the Wood Wide Web to the world. But she succeeded in capturing our imaginations. She speaks to a vital part of us that feels nameless, directionless.
This book isn’t about the change we want, it’s about the change we need. Deep, soul-shifting change that can motivate a person to upend her life repeatedly over an entire career and still decide the sacrifice is worthwhile. The stereotypical heroes of bygone eras were the ones who picked a side in a battle or war. They either won or lost heroically, but the heroism succeeded when the conflict ended. Today’s battles are sometimes more subtle, but they do not have a tidy ending. And they have followed us home. They have snuck into deeply personal decisions, those we make about our professional lives, our families, and our homes. For most of us who benefit from the dominant culture, they offer us an easy out: We CAN choose not to follow deeply unsettling truths. We CAN choose to remain comfortable. The battle is on our doorstep, but we CAN opt out.
Those of us with the luxury of choice need heroes who show us that following the disruptive truth is worthwhile, even if it continues to sow difficulty in every aspect of our lives over an entire lifetime. Suzanne Simard is one of those heroes.
I wish I had space this month to reflect on the other books I recommend in my meditative series on connecting with plants. I may stick with plants longer than I planned so I can cover at least one more next month. In the meantime, consider reading one yourself. You won’t regret it. Drop a comment (or email me) if you want me to write about a specific book! (By the way, every book on the list pays tribute to Simard. She IS the mother tree to so many.)
The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence, a collection of essays and poems edited by John C. Ryan, PatrĂcia Vieira, and Monica Gagliano
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoe Schlanger
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate--Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
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