A Sound Break for Your Mind
Episode XI: Nature is Always Listening
Photo from Unsplash
“Nature is always listening via mycelium. Mycelium is like strings on a violin, strings on a piano, strings on a guitar — these are filaments that are sensitive to vibrations. People coming together and celebrating with music: nature is responding with the mycelial networks being invigorated and inducing nutrients benefitting the commons.” - Paul Stamets
In our work we aim for spaces and systems that celebrate communication so those having something to say are buoyed by the places in which they say it. But communication is more than what is spoken.
Mycelia are the root-like fungal structures weaving through the soil and flowering into what we know as mushrooms. You’ve either never heard this word or are hearing it everywhere (and if you’re the former, get ready to soon become the latter) but either way, they’re having a bit of a moment. Mycelial structures act as informational and nutritional networks underground, interweaving with roots of plants to create a co-beneficial, symbiotic relationship, helping to locate and distribute nutrients faster than the individual root systems of the plant life around it. Species that above the surface jostle for position are linked in the soil by this humble but pervasive network that renders individuals a community. Maybe they forget, in their struggles up in the light, that they are all connected down where it’s harder to see.
‘Network’ is a tired word. The internet drives us apart as often as it brings us together; the comparison doesn’t seem quite right for what happens below the ground. ‘Human spirit’ seems more apt – something unseen, enduring, there for our unqualified benefit as a community.
As cards wishing well for the holidays and the new year crisscross the country, as emails slow down and out-of-office messages go up, we’re contemplating our own network and all that flows through it. There are many ways to communicate, sometimes the best way is to listen.
Wishing you peace.