A scientist’s career in communion with trees.

“She paid attention to Indigenous knowledge. A lightbulb went on when she heard Bruce ‘Subiyay’ Miller of the Skokomish Nation describe the forest as a symbiotic organism. Under the forest floor, Miller taught, ‘there is an intricate and vast system of roots and fungi that keeps the forest strong.’ This intuitively made sense to Simard. She traced the underground fungal connections and quantified Indigenous knowledge, using the methods and language of Western science.

“Scientists are supposed to be detached. Thankfully, Simard is anything but. To an astonishing extent, her memoir reveals how closely her research calibrates with changing passages in her life. She was interested in how saplings of different species exchange nutrients when she was just a sapling herself, struggling to transform childhood friendships into adult relationships. She became engrossed in whether mother trees recognize their offspring in forest networks when she became a mother of two daughters. As she struggled with life-threatening cancer, she grew curious about what dying trees send to neighbor trees in a forest. She discovered that like parents, trees send a parting gift of nutrients as they expire. As soon as Simard overcame her cancer, she started the Mother Tree Project to investigate forest renewal practices that protect biodiversity, carbon storage and regeneration.”

Great story. Pioneering scientific discovery. Highly recommended!