Finding the Mother Tree Quotes

“Humus is the greasy black rot in the forest floor sandwiched between the fresh litter from fallen needles and dying plants above and the mineral soil weathered from bedrock below. Humus is the product of plant decay. It’s where the dead plants and bugs and voles are buried. Nature’s compost. Trees love to root in the humus, not so much above or below it, because there they can access the bounty of nutrients.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“One of the first clues came while I was tapping into the messages that the trees were relaying back and forth through a cryptic underground fungal network. When I followed the clandestine path of the conversations, I learned that this network is pervasive through the entire forest floor, connecting all the trees in a constellation of tree hubs and fungal links.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“The forest itself is part of much larger cycles, the building of soil and migration of species and circulation of oceans. The source of clean air and pure water and good food. There is a necessary wisdom in the give-and-take of nature—its quiet agreements and search for balance. There is an extraordinary generosity.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“We think that most important clues are large, but the world loves to remind us that they can be beautifully small.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“the saws wouldn’t stop until whole valleys were gone.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“The concept of the Mother Tree and her connections to those around her had even made it into Hollywood, as a central concept to the tree in the film Avatar. How the film resonated with people reminded me how naturally crucial it is for people to connect to mothers, fathers, children, family—our own and the families of others—and to trees and animals and all of the creatures of nature, as one.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“We’d like to design our city in a way that mimics the patterns of mycorrhizal connection,” wrote a city planner from Vancouver.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“I knew that power in myself even before I’d uncovered these forest conversations.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“Mary Thomas’s mother and grandmother Macrit had taught her to show gratitude for the birches, to take no more than she needed, to place an offering in thanks. Mary Thomas had even called the birches Mother Trees—long before I had stumbled onto that notion. Mary’s people had known this of the birches for thousands of years, from living in the forest—their precious home—and learning from all living things, respecting them as equal partners. The word “equal” is where Western philosophy stumbles. It maintains that we are superior, having dominion over all that is nature.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“The true prize, we all knew, was that we were together, a friendship melded out of devastating diagnoses and hardship, facing death as one, never letting one another give up, picking one another up when we couldn’t take another second”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“Maybe even more important was the fungi’s ability to reproduce rapidly. Their short life cycle would enable them to adapt to the rapidly changing environment—fire and wind and climate—much faster than the steadfast, long-lived trees could manage. The oldest Rocky Mountain juniper is about 1,500 years old and the oldest whitebark pine around 1,300, in Utah and Idaho, respectively. Meanwhile the”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“Maybe even more important was the fungi’s ability to reproduce rapidly. Their short life cycle would enable them to adapt to the rapidly changing environment—fire and wind and climate—much faster than the steadfast, long-lived trees could manage.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“suddenly calmed. The wolves were not pursuing me; they were leading me out of the valley. As the vista widened, my trail converged with one from the south. I turned onto it, while the wolf tracks veered abruptly north.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“No, I was pregnant and needed to stay quiet to protect my child, the most precious thing in my life.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“The efficiency of clear-cutting felt brutally detached from nature, a discounting of those whom we consider quieter, more holistic and spiritual.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“Jean’s resplendent tree wasn’t shaking like mine; either Jean was more courageous than I was—of which I had little doubt—or the tree was stouter. A true elder. Leading, commanding, dignified. Its crown deeper and more imposing than those of its neighbors. Providing shade for the younger trees below. Shedding seed evolved over centuries. Stretching its prodigious limbs where songbirds roosted and nested. And where wolf lichens and mistletoes found crevices in which to root. Letting—needing—squirrels to run up and down its trunk in search of cones to store in middens for later meals. And to hang mushrooms in the crooks of branches to dry and eat. This tree alone was a scaffold for diversity, fueling the cycles of the forest.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“Was the root system of the aspen leaking some water into the soil for them to access? Maybe this was how the riotous plant community survived in the shallower, drier soil. But I had no clue how the water got from the old aspen trees to the little flowers without first evaporating in the sun.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“I wondered if the aspen copses were accessing water from the ravines and passing it upslope through their shared root systems.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“mothertreeproject.org”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“We can continue pushing our earth out of balance, with greenhouse gases accelerating each year, or we can regain balance by acknowledging that if we harm one species, one forest, one lake, this ripples through the entire complex web. Mistreatment of one species is mistreatment of all.

The rest of the planet has been waiting patiently for us to figure that out.

Making this transformation requires that humans reconnect with nature--the forests, the prairie, the oceans--instead of treating everything and everyone as objects for exploitation.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

“We can continue pushing our earth out of balance, with greenhouse gases accelerating each year, or we can regain balance by acknowledging that if we harm one species, one forest, one lake, this ripples through the entire complex web. Mistreatment of one species is mistreatment of all.

The rest of the planted has been waiting patiently for us to figure that out.”
― Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest