“We’d grown up knowing so well how silence can be soothing. Or deafening. Holding in our feelings, hiding something troubling.” 
***
“Sometimes, when the worst happens, we are no longer afraid of the things that used to scare us. The small things. The things that aren’t a matter of life and death.”
***
“We can continue pushing our earth out of balance, with greenhouse gases accelerating each year, or we can regain balance by acknowledging that if we harm one species, one forest, one lake, this ripples through the entire complex web. Mistreatment of one species is mistreatment of all.”
***
“If the mycorrhizal network is a facsimile of a neural network, the molecules moving among trees were like neurotransmitters. The signal between the trees could be as sharp as the electrochemical impulses between neurons, the brain chemistry that allows us to think and communicate.”
______

It might take me a few times of reading to imbued with the scientific side of the book — how trees sense and signal other plant, insects and fungi — that Suzanne meticulously reported. However, what fascinates me is Suzanne Simard’s talent in narrating her personal story and family history intertwined with the scientific inquiry. Her essay-like, meditating way of telling flows like water on each page, slowly taking you to the journey beyond data and technical terms. At its core, “this is not a book about how we can save the trees”, Suzanna writes, “this is a book about how the trees might save us”.