When young Suzanne Simard started working in a logging camp, there was confusion about why the forest was retreating instead of growing where new saplings had been planted to replace clearcut trees. She discovered how trees supported each other through a mycorrhizal network: a complementary connection between different species of trees, rather than a competitive one. She believes that our culture's singular, competitive focus had pervaded forestry as it has much of our lives.
"The
epistemology of Western culture, which modern science epitomizes,
starts with the implicit and sometimes explicit premise of separation
or disconnect: I – world; subject – object; inner – outer;
spirit – matter. Simard has been able to
use science to show connectedness."
"I was lucky to become one of the first in the new generation of women in the logging industry, but what I found was not what I had grown up to understand. Instead I discovered vast landscapes cleared of trees, soils stripped of nature's complexity...." -- Suzanne Simard
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