Finding Hope, Love, and Purpose in “Finding the Mother Tree”

Can someone help me out? I don’t remember who recommended this book to me, but I want to thank them. Here’s the setting: myself and an intelligent woman I know are sitting at a wooden table across from each other, drinking beer. We are talking about books and she tells me about Finding the Mother Tree – how it’s about the ancient tree deep in old forests that shares information throughout the forest. The mother tree teaches younger trees and helps to raise them. I look at my friend with skepticism. “It’s a real thing!” she says, and tells how the author – originally from the logging industry – did decades of research to eventually learn this. The thing is, I do not remember who this woman was or where we were! At the Biergarten with Shelley? At the Public Market with Jess? At a pub with Jen? All three of them deny that they have read it. Regardless, I recently picked up the book by Suzanne Simard to learn what it was all about.

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest is part memoir and part history of Simard’s research on fungal networks in forests. It took me almost half the book to get used to the memoir part; I think I wasn’t expecting it, and initially it felt weirdly stilted and forced. Once it clicked, however, I realized how vital it was to the story as a whole…

Simard realized when she was working as a silviculturist that the young trees planted in clear-cut areas where the old growth had been removed were sickly and dying. She had a hunch about the fungus she saw growing at the base of healthy trees and embarked on research… eventually doing Master’s work, and Doctoral, and Post-Doc research. She learned how certain species of fungus help trees to share water and nutrients. How they can give and take depending on which trees are more in need at different times, or on the strengths and weaknesses of different species of trees. Trees can even share warnings about threats – helping to prevent deaths from oncoming insects and more. Reading about her research was exciting: the next piece of the sophisticated communication via the “wood wide web” already starting to come into view as the previous piece was placed. It was also hopeful: understanding the deep level of connectivity and symbiosis at play in nature was somehow comforting. The confirmation that forest life is just as vibrant and wise as you *feel* it is when you step into the woods feels… well, it feels like rediscovering religion in a way.

It is the trees that bring together Simard with her family and friends and lovers. It is the trees that teach Simard how to cope with the untimely death of her younger brother, mere months before his only child was born. It is the trees that teach Simard how to let go of her marriage when it was dying in order to put new life into her children and into other relationships where it was needed. It was the trees (yes, and her loved ones) that taught her how to rebuild after she battled cancer, and to maintain connections with a family spread across Canada and the US. When she first found a mother tree in an area of old growth, it was the trees that reaffirmed her role as a mother. Her life – *all* of our lives – reflects the life of the forest. They complement and help each other. And most hopeful of all, they show signs that we can adapt and grow in a changing world, by sharing ourselves. Nature has so much to offer us – if we are willing to open ourselves up to accept it.

This is a fascinating and important book for understanding forest ecosystems and the world at large. It is easy to compare this book to Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer; both are a blend of memoir and science writing and reflections on growing things. Finding the Mother Tree has more of an overarching “plot”, whereas Kimmerer’s book is a collection of essays. For people who started to feel bogged down in the middle of Braiding Sweetgrass, tiring of the essays which started to feel too-similar after a while, Finding the Mother Tree may be more for you. Kimmerer is more of a poet and a better writer (which is more to my taste) and so I still think of Braiding Sweetgrass as my favorite between the two. Maybe picking favorites isn’t right… maybe they complement and support each other, like the Three Sisters. Kimmerer’s writing is sprinkled with Ojibwe words and Simard’s with French-Canadian sayings – these are the flowers growing over the moss, and their research is the fruiting bodies. And that is nourishing, body and heart, to those of us who open up to receive it.

Lessons From Reading 52 Books in a Year

Reading 52 books in a year is a benchmark I hear referenced often from other readers online. There is something about the target of one book for each week of the year that feels a little impressive, a sign of dedication to the love of reading. Since I started keeping track of the books I’ve read once I had finished grad school, I have averaged 25-30 a year. I never really thought to set a goal for the number of books I planned to read, before. To me it seemed silly – I just enjoy reading, why set targets for something when I could just enjoy reading whatever I felt like? But when halfway through 2022 I realized I was on track for 52 books, I decided to try to keep the momentum going and aim for 52.

Reading all the nominees for the Hugos was part of the reason my book count was higher this year: I read 25 science fiction/ fantasy books, 16 non-fiction books, 6 comic books, and 5 general fiction books. My favorites were: The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner, and The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton.

I thought reading nearly twice as many books as I normally do would feel twice as good, somehow. I thought I might look at my to-read list and feel twice as accomplished, like I had actually made a dent in it… Ha! The to-read list grows exponentially, but my reading pace is steady. I think reading faster will only make me feel farther away from completion. I was surprised to find, although I was happy to have had the opportunity to read so many books this year, there were some downsides as well.

One significant downside for me was I felt like I didn’t really “get to know” the books in the same way that I did when I was reading fewer books. When I read a little less, I got to spend time with each book, letting it sink in and really developing a relationship with it. This year, I felt like maybe that “relationship” with each book was a little rushed. Once I closed the cover on one book I was reaching for the next, instead of sitting and ruminating on each book I read for a few days before picking up the next one. The “book hangover” as it’s sometimes called is often an enjoyable period for me, when little things throughout the day will remind me of a character who enchanted me, a theme that resonated, or a detail of the setting or plot that was fascinating. I missed that time a little, and the way it imprinted my favorite books in my mind.

The biggest downside I found was that many other habits and hobbies fell to the wayside in order to fit in that much reading. I stopped working out for example, and I meditated a lot less. In the late summer I had the realization that the hobby I loved the most – reading – was becoming something that was making me *less* happy by keeping me from doing things that are important for my mental and physical health. Although I am really pleased that I read 52 books last year, I do not believe I will set goals for a greater and greater volume of reading again.

By finishing 52 books this year, I realized how motivating it was to work toward a concrete, achievable goal. It prompted me to pick another goal for 2023: to walk the distance from the Shire to Mordor (1799 miles) by the end of the year. I know it will be a stretch, but I also know from finishing my 52 books that I am capable of making time in my week to work towards something I want to accomplish. I wonder what I will learn from doing this challenge, next.

The Black Body in America: Reflections on “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Since I drive around for work all day, I occasionally find myself somewhere around the city with an awkward amount of time to pass before my next appointment. I often spend this by finding the nearest park or coffee shop to take a quick walk or have half a cup of coffee. Recently, I was downtown with under an hour to spend and decided to stop in the library. Shamefully, I haven’t been to the library in years. Mostly due to a bad habit of buying more books than I can read, I have never been without a book ready at hand to pick up whenever I need something new. Libraries are so much more than just a place to read books for free, though. When I walked into the atrium, there was a temporary art collection on display. Children’s story time was going on among brightly colored cushions. People were doing research on the computers and in the reference section, using the available editing software, or working with the drop-in tutoring that is offered for adults. I even discovered that my library lends out “book club bags” with multiple copies of the same book and a few optional materials for discussion. The last time I went to a library was three and a half years ago to get help writing a resume when moving back to the city from a tiny town up north. However, one of my best friends is a library clerk and, for a while now, I felt that in order to be able to face her guilt-free I needed to patronize my library again.

Inside, I walked around the shelves, feeling a little rush of happiness every time I saw a familiar title that I loved: Paladin of Souls, Middlesex, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, they were all there, but I often fall into the trap of spending time thinking about books wistfully at the expense of actually reading them. I decided to pick up a non-fiction book. I pulled up a LitHub article of “Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade,” rapidly picked a book from the list, looked up the dewy decimal number in the library catalogue, found it on the shelf, and went to check it out. This is when I had the embarrassing experience of being told my library card had been expired for many years and I still had fines from 2012.

“I’m curious,” I said, “what were the fines for?”

“Lolita and The Diary of Anaïs Nin,” said the young man behind the counter.

I never did read that diary, but I remember the beautiful language of Lolita and how it took a very long time for me to finish reading because it made me so sad I had to repeatedly put it down for a pause. They waived the fines, updated my card, and I walked out of the library with a copy of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (I was happy to find that the book was very short – hopefully I would not end up with more late fees.)

I had heard of Ta-Nehisi Coates before, but knew very little about him. Between the World and Me is Coates’s letter to his son about growing up black in America and what that meant for him when navigating family, self-image, education, romance, and – underlying everything – the safety of his physical self at home, on the streets, and in the wider community. We are all permitted to read this, but in writing a letter to his son, Coates is dealing with the perennial issue of parenthood – how do I make sure my kid grows up okay? How can I teach them to stay safe? To respect themselves and others? Which of my values do I try to instill in them? There is an awareness that it is impossible for our children to learn the same lessons in the same ways that we did. Some of the lessons we learned were hard and we want them to be better than that, but how do they learn these important lessons without going through the same trials? Eventually, they will grow to have different views and values, but we hope that they still understand some of the things that are so deeply important to us.

As he tracks his personal growth through childhood, college, early adulthood, and parenthood, the language of his story is poetic. It is this poetic voice that lays Coates’s world open for his son and the rest of us reading to understand his life on a more fundamental level than facts and figures could ever convey. “Poetry aims for an economy of truth—loose and useless words must be discarded, and I found that these loose and useless words were not separate from loose and useless thoughts,” Coates says, and he displays this to great effect throughout the book. He is precise, yet emotive and this is what makes Between the World and Me a brilliant read as well as an important one.

Behind Every Great Man… A Review of “Becoming” by Michelle Obama

My mother and I do not usually read the same kinds of books – I read novels, she reads non-fiction and books on Christian spirituality. Every now and then, one of us will hand the other a book that has really inspired us, but rarely do we find that the same things capture our attention. Last year, she asked for a copy of Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming for Christmas. As soon as she finished reading it, she started telling me that I needed to read it, too. I delayed, and her copy of the book was passed around to a couple of her sisters and some of my cousins before making its way back to me. “She reminds me of you,” my mom said. (Being the encouraging and loving mom that she is, she has a slightly unrealistic idea of how high-achieving I actually am!) I was not completely enthusiastic; although there are many social and political issues that I care about, I do not like following politicians’ lives or personalities like celebrities. It turns out, neither does Michelle Obama. In reading Becoming, I found that there were many things about her that surprised me. Most surprising of all, was that I found that I admired her very much, despite my initial reluctance to read the book.

If You’re a Bird, I’m a Bird: The Beautiful Power of “H Is for Hawk”

H is for Hawk is a bit of a departure from my normal reading habits since it is a memoir rather than a novel. I had heard high praise of the book and of Helen Macdonald’s writing, which grabbed my attention when it was released in 2014, although I never happened to pick it up. About a year ago I was with a patient of mine in her home and saw H is for Hawk sitting on an end table. “Oh, I’ve heard of this book!” I said. My patient told me she loved it and that she was reading through it for the third time. I was surprised by her enthusiasm and knew this book must be special to her. A couple weeks later, when I said goodbye for the final visit, she gave me the book. “Just promise you won’t let it sit on your shelf – if you don’t read it, pass it on to someone else,” she said. I promised. For a year, I looked at the cover of the book and said to myself that it was on my short list. When the New Year rolled around, I knew its time had come – I either had to read it or give it away.