Dec 19

Dec 19 Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

Author: Suzanne Simard
Publisher: Knopf
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery.

Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; she's been compared to Rachel Carson, hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in a way that is dazzling and profound. Her work has influenced filmmakers (the Tree of Souls of James Cameron's Avatar) and her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide.

Now, in her first book, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths—that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complex, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own.

Simard writes--in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways—how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, and remember the past; how they have agency about the future; elicit warnings and mount defenses, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies—and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them.

Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them--embarking on a journey of discovery, and struggle. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her own journey—of love and loss, of observation and change, of risk and reward, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world, and, in writing of her own life, we come to see the true connectedness of the Mother Tree that nurtures the forest in the profound ways that families and human societies do, and how these inseparable bonds enable all our survival.

TL;DR Review

Finding the Mother Tree wasn’t quite what I’d expected, but it was interesting and taught me something new and I’m glad I read it. I also recommend the audiobook!

For you if: You like nonfiction about nature AND memoirs.

Full Review

“Plants are attuned to one another's strengths and weaknesses, elegantly giving and taking to attain exquisite balance. There is grace in complexity, in actions cohering, in sum totals.”

After buddy reading Braiding Sweetgrass and loving it, two friends and I decided to choose another nature nonfiction to read together and landed on Finding the Mother Tree. It’s written by the woman who discovered just how connected and intelligent trees truly are.

I liked it for sure, although I didn’t quite *love* it. But that’s more of a “me thing” than a book thing. First of all, nothing can live up to Braiding Sweetgrass. Shoulda known that. But also, I didn’t read the synopsis carefully enough. I had expected it to be about the connections between trees, but this is about the story of how she discovered those connections. It’s much more like a memoir. And so I kept feeling like the book hadn’t started yet. About halfway through, though, I realized that my expectations were off and fell into the rhythm, and from then on I enjoyed the reading experience a lot more.

Simard’s family have been foresters for generations, but when she was young and working for a forestry company, she noticed that their attempts to comply with reforestation initiatives wasn’t really working. This propelled her down a career of scientific study and discovery that angered policymakers and had her butting heads with men who wanted nothing more than to dismiss her, but led to our modern understanding of the incredible reciprocity and communication that occurs between trees.

If you have any kind of science background, I think you’d really like this one, because she goes into detail about all her experiences and really takes us along on the journey. If you’re not a science person (like me), I recommend the audiobook. It was well narrated and definitely helped me stay engaged through the parts that otherwise might have lost me.

All in all, even though I struggled a bit, this book definitely taught me things and I’m glad I read it.