I’m taking dictation for the trees outside my cabin in a redwood forest in Santa Cruz, California. They talk continually, even if it’s silently, using sound, odors, signs, and vibes to communicate above and below ground. They’re built for networking, and they’re connected to everything, including you. Biologists, ecologists, foresters, and naturalists are increasingly claiming that trees have a language of their own, and that humans may learn to understand it.
Many people struggle with this concept because they don’t understand how trees are linked, according to biologist George David Haskell’s book The Songs of Trees, published in 2017. Haskell claims that connection in a network implies communication and spawns languages; realizing that nature is a network is the first step toward hearing trees speak. When danger approaches, wise elderly mother trees give their saplings liquid sugar and alert the neighbors. Young people who take foolish risks like leaf-shedding, light-chasing, and excessive drinking generally pay the price with their lives. Crown princes wait for the old kings to die so that they might assume their rightful position in the sun. It’s all happening in tree time, which is ultra-slow motion, so what we see is a freeze-frame of the action.
