Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine,

located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day Marin County.

Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Earlier this spring, I spoke with Dr. Suzanne Samar, the renowned scientist whose groundbreaking research, widely

known as the Wood Wide Web, demonstrated how trees communicate and exchange resources through networks

of mycorrhizal fungi within the soil. In this conversation, Suzanne discusses the urgent implications of our evolving understanding

of the interdependent nature of forests and for healing the rift between ourselves and the living

world. We also spoke about the origins of our connection to trees, her latest work on mother trees and how

they recognize and support their kin, and her new book, Finding the Mother Tree, discovering

the wisdom of the forest that's just been released.

You've described your work as an exploration of how we can regain our respect for the wisdom and intelligence of the forest

and through that help to heal our relationship with nature.

And over the course of your career, you've made some remarkable scientific discoveries about the ways that trees communicate and the intelligence that lies at the heart of the forest ecosystem.

And I was struck how in your new book you describe how even as a child and as a forester earlier in your career, you had this deep respect for trees and the forest and intuited much of what you ended up

proving scientifically. Where did this deep respect for trees and the forest come from?

You know, I grew up in the trees. I spent my childhood among the trees always, and my parents

are both from what's called the Kootenie region

of British Columbia, which is the inland rainforest. These are beautiful forests. They're much like

the West Coast forests, but they're inland. So there's towering cedars and hemlocks and furs and white pines. And, you know, I grew up

playing in those beautiful old-growth forests and not even really intellectually understanding

how connected I had become because I, it just was our way of life. And, you know, I understood the forest as this deeply connected, reverent place.

It was like our church, right?

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