Today’s post is thanks to our guest:

Debra Eve is a proud late bloomer and possessor of many passions. She’s variously been an archaeologist, martial artist and software trainer. Now she writes about fellow late bloomers while plotting her next grand adventure. You can find her at LaterBloomer.com and on Twitter: @DebraEve.

“Some of my kin look just like trees now, and need something great to rouse them; and they speak only in whispers.” Treebeard, The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien.

Did you know that trees interact with each other, and not just in books and movies?

Professor Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia has discovered that, in a forest ecosystem, older “mothership” trees communicate with all around them. Their roots transport carbon and nitrogen into the soil, shuttling those nutrients through friendly fungus networks to other trees in need.

Teresa caught one of those trees in autumn’s golden finery, ready to drop her leaves and stand naked to the sky. Bare and beautiful, grounded in her hidden connections. Even divested of leaves, she will sustain.

We have just celebrated the Winter Solstice. The nights remain cold, the forest dark, but each day the sun lingers a few minutes longer. Soon her leaves will unfurl, shiny and new, and soak up the light, transform it, store it, and send it pulsing on its way.

On the other side of the forest, a sapling will respond in gratitude.

I’m that sapling, thankful for connections I cannot see with people I only know through people I’ve just met. Yet sustained by old friendships, old mothership trees. Teresa calls us soul-family.

Professor Simard might call us mushroom family, which tickles the silly in me. “There’s a fungus among us” has a whole new meaning now.

Who will touch my life tomorrow? Where will I discover a whole new universe? Inspired by Teresa’s image, I long to walk through the forest and speak in whispers to the trees.

But for the moment I’ll traverse the blogosphere, visit friends and friends of friends, and wonder at their wisdom. For sometimes I need something great to rouse me, and know I will find it here, and be given to gratitude for the hidden connections that brought you to me.

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