The Forest Knows You

by Christopher Vacher

Because they do not move like we do, communicate like we do, or look like we do, plants and fungi are often considered to be raw materials for human use and consumption. We stomp on them, cut them down, eat them, destroy or pollute their home, and without any regard, many people hold them in a lower standing than the animal kingdom. 

If you attend one of our Enchanted Nature Tours, we spend some time discussing the sentient nature of all living things. This is no longer some, "hoodoo voodoo" idea practiced by pagan religious adherents. Science is now supporting what many people have known for eons. These fellow Earthly life forms are living, breathing, sentient beings. They feel pain, they communicate, they know and remember you, and they are aware when you are near them. They see without eyes, they hear without ears, and they smell without noses.

Plants and fungi also team up to share...yes, SHARE...nutritional resources with one another. Nature is not a greedy, adversarial template where only, "the strong survive". It is a cooperative living organism that is constantly experiencing death and rebirth. Not only that, humans are a part of this larger organism. We are each like one cell or one organ of a much larger organism.

In 2016, Suzanne Simard of British Columbia published her discoveries that trees not only know each other but share information and food. The forest itself is a an organism composed of many different life forms (organ-isms) that rely on each other to survive as a whole. Humans have a lot to learn from this.