Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

At 20 years old, Simard is working seasonally for a logging company in western Canada’s Lillooet Mountain Range. Her family historically felled trees for the logging industry by hand, so Simard seeks to become involved in the industry as well. The landscape around her frequently reminds her how her extended family has lived in harmony with the natural world despite its many dangers. She sees a direct connection between the relationships within her family and the interconnected nature of a forest: “How had the trees weathered the changing cycles of growth and dormancy, and how did this compare to the joys and hardships my family had endured in a fraction of the time?” (8).

Simard is the first woman to work for this logging company. She is assigned to check the progress of new seedlings planted in a remote clear-cut, a part of the forest that has been cleared of other plants to reduce competition. Simard has long been interested in how tree roots and root fungal networks—especially interconnected roots—contribute to the overall health of the forest. As she walks to the clear-cut, Simard stops to pluck a mushroom from the earth and examine its root tips, which are full of fungal nodes. When she arrives at the clear-cut, she is unnerved by the bareness of the clearing and the seedlings’ sickly growth. After a lifetime spent watching her family carefully fell trees without disturbing the forest’s ecosystem, she finds the sight surprising.

The new seedlings are struggling to survive. Simard examines their roots, noting the absence of fungal nodes. She compares these roots with the roots of a nearby seedling that sprouted on its own outside the clear-cut; the latter seedling is thriving and has fungus on its roots. In her report to her supervisor, Ted, Simard marks the clear-cut a failure. She collects pine needles from the seedlings to send to a lab for analysis.

Simard returns to the logging mill and writes her report, handing it to Ted before leaving to get books from the library on fungi. She does not tell anyone of her hunch that the fungi on the tree’s roots are essential for the tree’s growth, fearing that she will not be taken seriously because of her gender.

Simard describes her family’s history of hand-falling trees in the Monashee Mountain Range. She notes that her “family had logged trees for generations and yet seedlings had always taken root” (26). One summer when her extended family was staying on houseboats at Mabel Lake, her Uncle Wilfred’s dog fell into the outhouse. The men of the family began digging a hole next to the outhouse to rescue the dog. Simard watched them dig, noting the different soil layers, mushrooms, and roots the men exposed. The roots were covered in dense fungal networks. Simard keeps returning to this memory in her adult life because of how much of the forest floor she was able to see.

Simard’s family has always been able to “[evaluate] the character of individual trees to be cut” so that the forest’s ecosystem is not negatively impacted by their felling (32). Her grandfathers, uncles, and father were all experienced hand-fallers accustomed to the dangers of being in the wilderness, including the ever-present threat of bear attacks. Her father left “the bush” to work in grocery management after a tree felled by his father and uncle nearly hit him.

Simard and her coworker Ray are assigned to demarcate a boundary for a new clear-cut for the Lillooet logging company. Simard is worried about recovery, while Ray is more interested in including the older trees within the boundary so that the company can earn more money. Simard wants to argue against Ray’s orders but finds that she doesn’t have the confidence to stick up for the trees.

Simard cycles through the mountains to see her brother Kelly compete in a rodeo. It is summer and hot; when Simard takes a break, she wonders how the Douglas firs and ponderosa pines adapt to the lack of water and heat: “Could the old trees be helping the young ones by passing them water through root grafts?” (48). The seedlings around her are growing more robustly than the ones in the logging clear-cut, and the roots she examines are full of fungus. Simard wishes she knew more about how water travels through plants, especially trees, as it seems to her that the fungus network is essential to water adaptation. The idea that plants might cooperate rather than compete goes against the grain of scientific understanding.

Simard arrives at the rodeo in time to watch her brother compete. Simard idolizes her brother. Kelly is devoted to the rodeo lifestyle despite his frequent injuries. Simard reflects that Kelly did not deal with their parents’ divorce well, while she was old enough to distance herself from their conflicts. She leaves soon after the rodeo ends, though she regrets being too nervous to ask Kelly his opinion on her theory of roots and fungi. At home, she consults a mushroom book and reads about mycorrhizal fungi that form a mutual relationship with tree roots, exchanging soil nutrients for photosynthetic sugars the tree produces. The scientific research in the book emphasizes cooperation among plant species, leading Simard to question why the logging industry is so convinced of the competitive nature in the forest. Simard begins to form plans on testing a theory of cooperation over competition.