Finding the Mother Tree

Much more difficult reading than I had expected. This book demands a lot from the reader, and rewards well.

Difficulties... Technically: there's a lot of science, often tightly condensed. Stylistically: the book is a tapestry—okay, okay, I'll say it: a mycorrhizal network—of memoir, ecology, research, policy, education, inspiration, frustration, hope, and more; context-switching was often jarring, as was remembering all the personae and arborae. Emotionally: ugh; so much bullying from whitemale knowbetter pieceoshits, plus the other difficulties in her life, plus all the omnipresent destruction of trees and forests and ecosystems.

Difficult, finally, on a personal level: I'm deeply hardwired as both a cooperator and a skeptic. Even though I know how her research ends, it's different when reading about the experiments themselves: I found myself painfully conflicted between rooting for her and finding nits to pick in her experimental design, because intellectual honesty demands stricter rigor when I want something to be true. (See Feynman's First Principle.) Satisfyingly, most of the times I had a question, she addressed it within a few pages. Other questions, time and research will tell. Also satisfyingly, and this is not much of a spoiler, cooperation wins out at the end. Fuck yeah.