Imagining Nets and Webs

   One fall day when we were hiking, my partner and I suddenly entered a cedar grove.  For me a cedar grove is like walking into a cathedral.  A hush comes over me as I marvel at the ancient trunks and twisted branches of the Eastern white cedars.  The ground is reddish brown from the fallen needles and little else grows there except for baby cedars.  I love how the trees grow in groups that seem to be interconnected family members within a community of trees.  

They always feel friendly to me somehow and I feel welcomed in and protected.  I admit that some of my best friends are trees but there is something about cedar groves that you can’t miss.  I imagine that their roots are intertwined and that they communicate by touching their branches and sending messages along their roots.  I grew up with stories about fairies at the bottom of the garden and sentient trees and I become childlike in the woods, my imagination flows freely and my senses are wide open.  I feel connected by the trees to the earth and the sky.

   So imagine my surprise to find out from David Suzuki in one of the information emails from his foundation that there is actually an underground network of communication (The Many Marvels of the Mysterious Mushroom).  Apparently fungi have masses of underground threads called mycelia which form networks similar to the neurons in our brain.  

These networks connect plants and trees with each other. They help plants to absorb water and minerals and produce chemicals to resist disease.  Mycologist Paul Starnets calls mycelial networks “Earth’s natural internet” because they help plants communicate.  He finds them to be similar to brains with the use of chemical messengers and a cellular web.

   Recently we returned to the cedar grove and as my partner and I wandered through the trees I tried to imagine this mycelial network beneath my feet. I tried to picture the chemical messengers moving along the web spreading information.  This got me thinking about neurophysiology and how the mind is not just in the brain but is throughout the body.  Neurotransmitters connect physical information with emotions and thoughts between every cell.

  It also got me thinking about the internet and how people are using social media to create change in the world.  Just in the last month I have signed a petition for Mulala to take to world leaders about the rights of children to education (change.org), have joined with the Yinka Dene nations (Yinkadenealliance.ca, Holdthewall.ca) in protecting land in BC, have sent a letter to Justin Trudeau on climate change with the David Suzuki Foundation (www.DavidSuzuki.org) and the list goes on and on.  I just read a story in the Toronto Metro newspaper about a woman posting on Facebook the need for winter clothes for the refugee family from Syria that her group is sponsoring.  She hoped to get enough clothes for 5 families.  Instead she got enough for 120 families and volunteers to help organize it.  Global (globalcitizen.org) asks people to be a global citizen not a bystander.  I am connected by the internet to thousands, maybe millions of people who are working to make the world into a global family that takes care of its members.  It boggles my mind.

 Try as I might I can’t really picture the mycelian network or the neural pathways in my own brain or the internet.  However, I can see the tree trunks and people who look like they are physically separate so maybe that seems more true on the surface.  But it is only part of the story.  If I look deeper it is amazing how we are all connected.  Standing in the cedar grove I could feel how amazing that is.  And just like the trees and fungi I can choose to connect with like-minded people even though we are physically separate to learn from each other and to bring support and resources wherever they are needed.  It takes some imagination.  We have lots of that.  We can use it to imagine horror or we can use it to imagine health.  The systems are all designed for health.  Imagine that!