My sapphic book club usually picks fiction, but after hearing about Simard’s memoir, we decided to have a special nonfiction treat.

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest twines Suzanne Simard’s life with her forestry and ecological studies. The first half was very, very rough for me, unexpectedly so. She starts her career in the lumber industry as someone who replants forested areas after an approved cutting. The mass tree death, the uncaring officials, and the worship of profit were hard to read about. Things improve sightly when she switches to government work, but we’re hit with the grueling realization that governmental policy is not much better than a lumber company’s. The policies were so poor, I jokingly wondered aloud if these events were during the 1980s–turns out I was right! Simard did her best with what she knew at the time, and the writing itself is quite good. The content itself was difficult to get through.

The second half of the book was brighter. Simard moves onto academia, and the science of mother trees comes to fruition. I knew less about the mother tree concept than fungal networks, so I enjoyed the learning. “Mother” trees connect to younger trees via mycelium networks and favor resource sharing with their genetic relatives. When a mother tree is under duress, it dumps carbon and other yummies into the network, to ensure survival of the species. Surrounding native plants create more stable networks and lay the foundation for forest growth and stability in the long term. One of the last studies mentioned researching how forests surrounding salmon spawn sites benefit from the postcoital corpses. Fascinating stuff!

Simard’s biography wasn’t so linear (whose life is, haha), and sometimes the biographical sides had to stretch to connect to the scientific findings. Not much was made of Simard’s queerness, and I’m happy for her. I’m glad she’s still out there somewhere, working and living. My biggest disappointment with the book is the lacking connective tissue to indigenous environmentalists and activism. A lot of what Simard spent years studying, learning, and realizing for herself is already known to indigenous groups. Towards the end of the book, it seemed like Simard would make the reasoning leap and incorporate more of First Nations’ ongoing conservation projects. They get a few sentences of acknowledgement, and I wanted more.

Overall, Finding the Mother Tree accomplished what it set out to do. It’s an educational memoir about one scientist and her ongoing love affair with trees. Interesting and well worth the reading, but ultimately, I wanted more bark to chew on.