Connectedness I — Trees

Here is a short piece from the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Overstory by Richard Powers (perhaps inspired by the book, The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben — whose German name translates to “good life”), describing the discovery of how trees actually communicate with each other and with the world around them.

Something marvelous is happening underground, something we are just learning to see. Mats of mycorrhizal cabling [a symbiotic association between a green plant and a fungus, i.e. trees and mushrooms] links trees into gigantic, smart communities spread across hundreds of acres. Together, they form vast trading networks of goods, services, and information…

There are no individuals in a forest, no separable events. The bird and the branch it sits on are a joint thing. A third or more of the food a big tree makes may go to feed other organisms. Even different kinds of trees form partnerships. Cut down a birch and a nearby Douglas-fir may suffer…

In the great forests of the East, oaks and hickories synchronize their nut production to baffle the animals that feed on them. Word goes out, and the trees of a given species – whether they stand in sun or shade, wet or dry – bear heavily or not at all, together as a community…

Forests mend and shape themselves through subterranean synapses. And in shaping themselves, they shape, too, the tens of thousands of other linked creatures that form it from within. Maybe it’s useful to think of forests as enormous, spreading, branching, underground, super-trees.

Consider how our lives, in so many ways, are connected to and depend on plants and trees.

Then consider how we as human beings are connected with each other in ways that go beyond physical proximity. We are connected by our blood lines, our beliefs, our neighborhoods, our work, our aspirations, our spirits, and our true nature as human beings. Think of the ways that benefactors in your life have affected you and how you pass that loving connection on to others that you have met in your life. You cannot know the depth and breadth of you effect on the world.

Taking some ungranted license and replacing some of the words in the passages above, we get:

There are no individuals in a Community, no separable entities. The human and the community it dwells within are a joint thing.

It may be useful to think of communities as enormous, spreading, branching, above-ground, super-humans.