Hi, I'm Ferris Jaber, and for this week's issue of the New York Times magazine, I wrote about a scientist named Suzanne Simard who changed the way we think about the fundamental nature of forests.
In biology in general, one of the most fundamental principles is that all individuals compete with each other for space and resources.
And it is this kind of ruthless competition between individuals and between species that drives a lot of evolution.
That's kind of what forces organisms to become more adapted to their environments and to outcompete others.
It's all about leaving more offspring.
So I think for a long time, biologists, botanists, foresters thought of trees as competing individuals.
But what Suzanne has shown is that that model is far too simplistic.
There's clearly a lot more going on in a forest, and in any ecosystem, there's negotiation, there's compromise, there's reciprocity.
So much of what Suzanne studies is about connectivity.
And I think right now, because of the pandemic, the pandemic has really revealed just how connected we all are and how vulnerable we become when those networks break down.
And I think that really underscores that.
Reciprocity and cooperation is important for any society or ecosystem, whether it's a forest one or a human one or otherwise.
So here's my story.
The social life of forests read by Julia Whalen.
As a child, Suzanne Simard often roamed Canada's old growth forests with her siblings, building forts from fallen branches, foraging mushrooms and huckleberries, and occasionally eating handfuls of dirt.
She liked the taste.
Her grandfather and uncles, meanwhile, worked nearby as horse loggers, using low impact methods to selectively harvest cedar, Douglas fir, and white pine.
They took so few trees that Simard never noticed much of a difference.
The forest seemed ageless and infinite, pillared with conifers, jeweled with raindrops, and brimming with ferns and fairy bells.
She experienced it as nature in the raw, a mythic realm, perfect as it was.