42 pages • 1 hour read
Suzanne SimardFinding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Nature and Generosity
Simard describes her childhood as characterized by a reverent co-existence with the forests of British Columbia. Her family had a long history of mindful hand-falling that didn’t disrupt the forest’s ecosystem, and she was raised to respect the forest as a place of connection and healing. When she began her career first at the logging company and then as a scientific researcher, Simard maintained this belief in the forest as a living, interdependent entity and sought to prove it scientifically.
The scientific, academic, and political discourse on the nature of the forests was grounded in competitive Darwinian thought when Simard began her career. Though she and her family clearly perceived the interconnected nature of the plants of the forest, policymakers and loggers adhered to the belief that trees do not need a diverse ecosystem to survive. Simard implies that this apparent disagreement over scientific evidence actually masks a deeper conflict of worldviews. The era’s policymakers held a short-term view of the forest that was molded by capitalism and market fluctuations. In part, this was a matter of pragmatism. By ignoring the necessary interdependency of the forest’s plants and disregarding Simard’s early research into interspecies cooperation, policymakers could justify harmful but profitable clear-cutting and free-to-grow practices. However, Simard suggests that the resistance to her arguments went deeper than mere profit; for people immersed in hyper-individualism, the idea that nature itself might be cooperative threatened to upend everything they knew.
Nevertheless, Simard’s research into the relationship between alder and pine, and later between birch and fir, foregrounded the necessity of diversity and the sharing of resources between different species of trees. Even before introducing the idea of plant intelligence, Simard frames this phenomenon with reference to a quality conventionally thought of as human, saying, “There is an extraordinary generosity” among the interconnected species of the forest (3). Simard discovers this generosity in her own relationship to the forest, as it is the place she seeks when she needs emotional support through the more difficult times of her life. The concept of nature’s generosity culminates in Simard’s discussion of Mother Trees. These trees embody an ecosystem in which each plant is committed to sustaining the overall health of the community by sharing nutrient resources, sending warning signals, and distributing water through mycorrhizal networks.
If Simard finds the human quality of generosity in nature, she also finds nature’s patterns of support in humans: “Family. In all its imperfection, and stumbles, and small fires. We were there for one another when it counted” (296). Simard and her family, like the trees of the forest, are generous in their emotional support and physical resources, treating their inner family the same way that Mother Trees behave with their seedlings. By noting these correspondences in her scientific research and her memoir, Simard challenges policymakers and readers alike to rethink not only how they view nature and its resources, but also what this says about their broader values.
Feminism, Scientific Research, and Legacy
As a woman working in a male-dominated field, Simard’s biggest hurdle in inspiring positive change among the Forest Service’s policymakers was her gender. Simard opens her memoir by claiming that she seeks to heal the natural world where policymakers have declared war on parts of it for capitalistic gain. Simard’s family history in hand-falling uniquely positioned her to advocate interconnection, cooperation, and generosity from the very start of her career. However, it would take decades for the scientific and academic community to look past its biases and recognize Simard’s contributions.
Simard paints a multilayered picture of the challenges she faced as a woman in the field of forest ecology. Outright sexism was common, as in her presentation of her alder research, when some male members of the audience telegraphed their disregard for her by “talking loudly” among themselves. Immediately following this scene, Simard recounts her falling-out with her beloved brother Kelly due to his misogynistic remarks about a woman’s place being in the home. However, gendered expectations also hindered Simard in subtler ways. Her anecdote about receiving less funding than she’d asked for after she began lactating during a presentation highlights the lack of accommodation for pregnant and nursing mothers in male-dominated environments. Simard’s own internalization of gender norms contributed to her anxiety about public speaking, as she was acutely aware of how society perceives women who speak up: “The criticisms doused on women behind their backs, even if said in jest, always burned my ears” (206). Lastly, Simard draws a tacit parallel between traditional male gender norms and the traditional view of nature as competitive. By suggesting that trees thrive through cooperation, Simard was implicitly challenging the value of such norms.
In this climate, Simard had to work extra hard to make sure that the results of her experiments could not be refuted in any way. As her experience in the field grew, Simard found more confidence and spoke out publicly against policymakers in public forums such as the Vancouver Sun. Though Simard eventually left the Forest Service because her outspokenness reached the point that the policymakers no longer wanted to employ her, Simard’s transition to a university professorship allowed her to expand her research in ways she previously couldn’t. Through all of this, Simard stresses that while her gender hampered her in some ways, it also contributed significantly to her research. This is clearest in Simard’s discussion of motherhood, which both personally fulfilled her in a way that bolstered her confidence and shaped her eventual conceptualization of Mother Trees. Her discoveries about the latter in turn strengthened her commitment to leave a legacy to future women in the field. Simard therefore suggests that women have unique perspectives to bring to their scientific and academic communities, and part of what she hopes to achieve through her work and memoir is enabling women’s research to be taken more seriously.
The Memoir as Embodiment
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest is structured as a narrative memoir, with Simard’s scientific theories paired directly with experiences in her personal life. This format echoes the intimate ties between Simard’s family and the forest, but it also embodies the substance of her theories themselves: the interconnectivity and cooperation of diverse species. The pairing of forest ecology and family therefore emphasizes that all humans have a responsibility to understand their ecology, find a connection with their natural surroundings, and use that connection as a model for human relationships.
In the opening pages of her memoir, Simard asks, “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). This question inspires Simard to organize each chapter of her memoir around a complementary pair of anecdotes that connects forest to family. In Chapter 7, “Bar Fight,” Simard describes the lukewarm reception her research received from male policymakers with her final argument with her brother over his comments about women’s roles. When Simard is first actualizing her concept of Mother Trees, her understanding of motherhood is also evolving as she undergoes chemotherapy treatments. In fact, Simard suggests that her personal life shaped most of the discoveries, theories, and new questions that Simard posed in her scientific research. This shows her personal investment in the forests and demonstrates the way in which researchers often arrive at new concepts or ideas: Through their understanding of how all things are interconnected, including their emotions to their thoughts.
In each chapter, Simard seeks to embody her scientific concept of interspecies cooperation with examples of her family seeking to find ways to communicate, love, and share. This format allows Simard to display the interconnected nature of work and personal life in a positive way. Simard argues that “everything in the universe is connected—between the forests and prairies, the land and the water, the sky and the soil, the spirits and the living, the people and all other creatures” (283). The fluid boundaries between her experiences in the forest and her experiences with her family reflect Simard’s concluding remarks on honoring the diversity and generosity of our relationship with our natural surroundings.
