800 years young …

How did you get so big? I wondered, standing in the rain, awed by an 800 year old being rising up through the mist.

The low grrrrr of ocean waves crashing not far away. I sobbed quietly, overwhelmed by joy and awe in the Pacific Northwest coastal forest.

This 800 year old giant has lived with generations of indigenous peoples, witnessed the recent arrival of Europeans, felt the steady deforestation of its coastal home, and now grapples with the destabilization of our climate.

All the while nourishing and uplifting the forest community of which it is part.

Western science has just recently understood that forests are collaborative diverse communities.

From the industrial scientific mindset, a forest has been seen as a bunch of trees in a competition with each other for light, space and nutrients. A resource that we could clear cut, without a thought, to use for our own purposes. Now we know that underground, the forest is a network of inter-species connections used for support and nourishment.

Each forest has special communication hub trees, what Suzanne Simard, a Canadian forest ecologist, called ‘mother trees’. Mother trees pass nutrients, protection from disease, and information exchange that helps the entire forest flourish. The forest communicates in partnership with fungal networks.

And this has always been understood by indigenous ways of knowing, as Robin Wall Kimmerer so powerful explains in one of my all time favorite books, Braiding Sweetgrass.

Could our below ground connections, our entangled roots, support us to transform the intense polarizations of this time that we are living?

Could our interconnections give us the resilience and generosity to honor and pay respect to the experience of others, to learn from and support each other in ?

Can they hold us through our fears and denial and give us the courage to act with “stubborn optimism” on the great threats that we face today?

As we get settled into the year called 2024, take time to feel your roots and the invisible connections they make, to feel your human and inter-species embeddedness.

How are you living big-tree-dreaming?

We are part of a greater whole.

We can wonder at the weave of process that unfolds between and through us.

To feel more connected, try asking yourself:

How am I nourished by underground networks?

In what ways am I being a ‘mother tree’ to others in my community?