Tress have it figured out. They get it. They understand that it’s about everything working together. I think I understand this more than ever thanks to the coincidence of reading three books and a visit in my yard with a man named Ben.

Awhile ago, my sister, Julie, gave me a book: The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben has worked as a forester for decades and has come to know trees in ways that are astounding. Trees smell. Trees taste. And trees care for each other in remarkable ways.

Wohlleben has documented that trees send out electrical signals underground to warn other trees of danger or to share nutrients with a tree in nutritional distress. My foraging friend, Suzanne, had already taught me about the fungi or mycelium, that travel underground connecting all trees. Wohlleben reenforces this knowledge with scientific studies of community interactions and interdependencies among trees. Trees get it.

I looked at our yard and wondered what the underground signals were as a result of our planting a few evergreens, a river birch and a copper beech adjacent to each other in a section of our yard. These trees wouldn’t naturally grow so near to each other. What about the two cherry trees we planted this spring on our hillside? Had cherry trees every grown in this clay-rich soil in the northeastern part of the U.S.? How, I wondered, are the trees that are hundred or more years old adapting to the insertion of these new trees into their underground system as well as the canopy of our yard? The answer, so far as I can tell, is that trees  adapt to whatever comes their way. Trees get it.

Then I read The Overstory by Richard Powers. It took patience to fall into this book of wide-ranging characters from many walks of life. All Powers’s characters are compelling in a variety of ways, some more than others, despite their different backgrounds. These divergent characters get connected by a common passion for trees. The human world in this novel doesn’t know what to do with these treehuggers. I was spellbound by the way Powers told this story and replicated the world of trees in  his main characters, showing their interconnectedness and all of the ties to others, while also showing how few humans understand these ties that bind us. Powers tells the story of interdependency and community happening all the time all around us. Most of us don’t see it, or get it. But the trees do.

 

Then came the third in the triptych of books: Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori with marvelous illustrations by Lucille Clerc. My friend, Peggy, who is a prairie restorer and artist, urged me to get the book, telling me she’d found it in an art museum store in Europe. I found the book at the Portland Museum of Art (Maine) – one copy left. In under 250 pages I learned about trees such as Séve Bleue of New Caledonia which is a nickel-hoarding tree. When its bark is pricked or cut, the Séve Bleue bleeds turquoise blue sap, reflecting the large amounts of nickel it contains!  I also learned that the Eastern White Pine outsmarts competing trees in the forest by hogging nitrogen from the soil. Lack of nitrogen ultimately kills off neighboring trees so the White Pine can reach its full height, well over 100 feet.

In the midst of all this reading,  I saw the movie  Fantastic Fungi. A tad psychedelic, but absolutely gorgeous at times, it takes viewers on a ride into the world Wohlleben calls “the wood wide web” – the underground interconnected system that supports life above the surface. Again, trees get it.

Enter Ben the Master Arborist.  The man clearly loves trees and knows them better than the other arborists who had come to bid on tree care. One of the other men misidentified multiple trees in the yard. But Ben knew them all, touched their trunks as if in greeting and walked around them telling me their stories.

We were certain that a messy and listing Linden tree was destined for the ax. Stringers sprung from its base, a sign of struggle, and a hole now housed squirrels. When we got to the Linden, Ben said, “Well, this poor thing is ticked at you for putting your driveway right on top of its root system. See how it’s sending up stringers on the back side but there’s nothing on the driveway side?” We walked around it.  “It’s fighting to balance out that life- squelching driveway.” I pointed out the hole. Ben shrugged,, “Trees don’t mind a squirrel or two. And she’s leaning toward the street but she’s not going anywhere. Look how she’s growing on the other side to create balance.” The Linden didn’t need to come down, Ben said, it just needed some limbs trimmed to help it grow and reach that balance it was working hard to achieve. That’s it.

I asked Ben about these books I’d read. He knew them all and said, “Just glad someone is getting the word out. Anyone who spends time with trees learns their stories.”

Wouldn’t it be great if the same could be said about people? If we learned each other’s stories would we finally see the benefit to all of us in building community? As Powers writes in The Overstory,

“The best argument in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”

A friend, Mark Longo, who is a jazzman and artist, sent me this turmoiled-filled past weekend which seems to be asking the same question and suggesting the same action from all of us: Before You Call the Cops

 

Underneath our skin, our geography, our beliefs, aren’t we all in this together? If we created a culture of care like the underground network the trees have, wouldn’t we all be better off? A crazy thing to take away from three books about trees read at this moment in history? Perhaps. But the trees get it.