Nature’s Network

By Steven Foster |

There are activities that get people out from in front of some type of electronic devise and out into nature. For some it’s hunting season, for others hiking, and if my Facebook page is to be believed, many of my acquaintance have been out hunting morel mushrooms. How many have I found? Zero. Not because I haven’t been out in the woods, it’s just that my attention is focused on unfurling tree leaves.

Sassafras trees in bloom—dancing along a fence.

Morels are a great signal marking what I think of as the most magical time of year in the Ozarks. It is the time between redbuds and the blooms of dogwood, when the oaks, hickories and dozens of other woody plants are unfurling their leaves, inconspicuously flowering depositing their pollen on the hood of your car. It is the time of year when you look out across a valley and see a thousand shades of green. Beauty abounds with each glance.

The fruiting morel bodies and the unfurling deciduous tree leaves are great reminders of the fact that what is going on with all vegetation, be it trees or fungi is actually happening out of sight, beneath the surface of the soil. About 60% of a tree’s weight and mass is below the soil surface. A single morel fruiting body plucked from above the soil’s surface it not one individual, but an appendage of a biological form whose primary mass is also below the soil surface. The trees and the morels are not separate from one another. One serves the other and vice versa in a vast network of chemical and ion exchange signaling, something akin to the internet, and global in reach.

Delightful, edible (in moderation) Sassafras flowers

We borrow metaphors from nature and consciously or unconsciously mimic her systems. We appear to be individuals on the surface, yet we are inextricably, biologically connected to the same networks, seen or unseen, that connect the underground life of an oak tree with the vast underground network that pops-up in form as a morel. This being the time of the forgotten celebration called “Earth Day,” recall your connection to nature. Look up, look down and look behind you. If no one is watching, go for it—hug a tree and send a signal out its roots to your fellow human beings. Is their any connection? Hello? Anybody home?

Tulips at the Crescent Hotel, 12 April 2015, Eureka Springs, Arkansas