Root System
A friend turned one night in circle and said: “You know, there is a lot of bad in the world – but there are a lot, a lot of people that are here to help. And it’s the helpers that need help, too. So they can keep going. We need to remember that we have support in each other and under our feet.”
So true, I thought. So deceptively simple, yet dynamically nourishing.
I also read this article about trees recently, and how intricate their support and communication.
“Since Darwin, we have generally thought of trees as striving, disconnected loners, competing for water, nutrients and sunlight, with the winners shading out the losers and sucking them dry. The timber industry in particular sees forests as wood-producing systems and battlegrounds for survival of the fittest.
There is now a substantial body of scientific evidence that refutes that idea. It shows instead that trees of the same species are communal, and will often form alliances with trees of other species. Forest trees have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony. These soaring columns of living wood draw the eye upward to their outspreading crowns, but the real action is taking place underground, just a few inches below our feet.
“Some are calling it the ‘wood-wide web,’” says Wohlleben in German-accented English. “All the trees here, and in every forest that is not too damaged, are connected to each other through underground fungal networks. Trees share water and nutrients through the networks, and also use them to communicate. They send distress signals about drought and disease, for example, or insect attacks, and other trees alter their behavior when they receive these messages.”
Indeed trees are not isolated beings as big business would have us believe, attempting to divorce us from the sentient communities that are trees. Trees, like humans need community to thrive.
So how are you? Have you been spending as much time developing your roots and your connections as you have been on likes and the hub-bub of the day? If we are not careful, the messaging of social businesses may wreck the same havoc that the timber industry did. You my friend are not a loner – even if you feel like it. Or maybe life has you so exhausted it is hard to see the forest for the trees. (I did that to see if you were still reading).
I think it is important for us to check on our root system. So here I am checking in on you. How are you? Are you doing fun things?
Hope so. This Monday is also a full moon in Cancer, so think watery feelings, connection to home, releasing what is keeping you from shining and stretching towards the sun. It’s a full moon eve of oatmeal cookies, and Florence Scovel Shinn reading, with a snowy ice storm outside as I click clack on the keyboard over here. I could be pushing my self, but the soft pull of creativity and comfort drew me here and I trust that. May this full moon pull you further away from what dehydrates you and move you closer to the effulgence of your brilliance.
And if you are reading this on a random Tuesday, the offer still stands.
Kate
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” – John Muir
Time sensitive: Step Into the Spiral is soon restarting. It’s an online class that develops your relationship with your own inner-connection through the rhythms and forces of Nature. Learn more here + share with someone in your root system who needs to be rehydrated to life’s inner-connected inspiration. Plus we learn tree meditations. I love a good tree meditation.