A lot of my work in outdoor therapeutic practice has been around trees. It’s something that holds a personal fascination and private comfort for me, how trees all work together. I’ve recently delivered a workshop at the IOL Bushcraft Conference on how trees intersect with humans – the relationship between us. Many people thanked me for the the relaxing wellbeing-style workshop and asked for a transcript of my talk, which I was happy to share, but felt it needed to first be referenced, which I went home and did. In finding all the studies and articles my knowledge had come from, I came across a book by a woman called Suzanne Simard – the woman who actually did the early studies that most of our knowledge of trees and their connections today are based on! I’ve read hundreds of books over the years, heard dozens of talks and I’ve never heard her name before. Not to get all feminist here, but isn’t that so typical. Men have written books and built careers on the work of an unacknowledged female scientist. It frustrates me and makes me angry for women and sad for my daughters. But I digress….
Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard
I loved this book. There were, I’ll admit, parts of it where my eyes glazed over when they were talking about isotopes and labelling and carbon this and that, but Finding the Mother Tree is a book about the story of an amazing life dedicated to understanding her native trees in British Columbia. This book is the story behind the science, and I thought it was fantastic.
A daughter of a logging family, Suzanne Simard was the first female logger for the company she started out in. She became interested in the health of the forest once trees had been logged and sprayed by chemicals such as Roundup, and brought her findings to conferences, hoping policy makers and bosses would listen, but they did not. In fact she was ridiculed, vilified and mocked.
I am blown away by her resilience in the face of that mockery, and love how – like her trees – she surrounded herself with people she benefitted from, as they did from her. Her friends and family became her own mycorrhizal network, through days, weeks and months spent in the forest and one the road, time separated from her daughters and through a cancer diagnosis.
Through it all she kept finding out more and more about the relationships between trees, when they feed each other, when they heal each other. She networked with other female scientists (and some male) across the world and they made discoveries that those of us who work in outdoor therapies now take for granted.
How trees talk to each other, says the BBC. How Trees Talk To Each Other And How To Listen To Them says BBC Radio. The phrase Wood Wide Web is quoted far and wide, and even the Nature Journal that first published Suzanne Simard’s work is quoted for coining that phrase, but not a mention of Suzanne Simard’s personal and professional sacrifices to bring this knowledge to the world. I will admit, I feel more outraged than she ever seems to in her book. If my girls were still small I’d be adding Ms Simard to our Women Who Did series, alongside Jane Goodall!
Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree is available at all major book sellers, including Kindle, paperback, and as an audiobook.
