‘Maybe, then, what we need to understand the forest’s underland,’ I say, ‘is a new language altogether – one that doesn’t automatically convert it to our own use values. Our present grammar militates against animacy; our metaphors by habit and reflex subordinate and anthropomorphize the more-than-human world. Perhaps we need an entirely new language system to talk about fungi . . . We need to speak in spores.’ ‘Yes,’ says Merlin with an urgency that surprises me, smacking his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘That’s exactly what we need to be doing – and that’s your job,’ he says. ‘That’s the
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