My students and I were tracing water and nitrogen and carbon flowing from old Douglas firs to tiny germinants nearby, helping them survive. I was finding proof for my early theories that seedlings deep in the shadows of elderly trees depended on receiving these subsidies through mycorrhizal linkages. I was discovering that the networks in the old-growth forests were far richer and more complex than I’d ever imagined, but in large clear-cuts they were simple and sparse. The larger the clear-cut, it appeared, the more
