192. Thinking about the forest going silent and trees communicating with one another.

Me being a nerd and talking about trees and the mycorrhizal network.

This post is free for everyone to read because nature is abundant and magical, I hope you love reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you for being here and reading what I put out into the world. Gracias, gracias, gracias 🪄

Have you ever been walking through a forest or some sort of isolated country lane when everything falls silent and it no longer feels good?

I live in the middle of the countryside and I know my paths. I’m a creature of habit and whenever I find a route that I like, I stick to it. I have a couple on rotation for when I go for a run or grab my bike, but sometimes those same paths that bring me intense joy feel really creepy. By creepy I mean that I feel watched. I feel like I’m being observed and that I can’t see what’s got its eyes on me. I tend to tell myself that it’s because I’m in a state of fear and that it’s all in my head, but everything changed when I saw a video on the internet (isn’t that how everything starts?) about how the forest going silent can be a sign of it telling you that something’s wrong. I quickly became obsessed with the idea of the forest communicating with me and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I replayed the times it’s happened and I kept wondering if maybe there had been danger near by and I was picking up on something thanks to the trees, the animals, the insects and the wind. I never encounter anything other than a few deer and a couple of cars, what danger could there possibly be?

My findings are that when the birds stop singing and the insects fall silent, it’s because danger is nearby or some sort of sudden change has happened and they’re signaling that it’s time to pay close attention. Where I live, the only dangers I can think of are hawks, which there are loads of or wild boar which I’m not sure about because I’ve only ever seen two and one of them was dead. Sorry. There are also a lot of deer but can or does a deer ever hurt another animal for it to be considered a threat? The internet says that deer are wired to flee, not fight and that they don’t attack other animals unless they’re cornered or are defending their young. My favourite animal wins again.

If there’s no predator about, other changes the forest could be signalling are drops in atmospheric pressure, thunder, the smell of smoke or any other foreign scent brought by the wind (do I count?). I fell deeper down the rabbit hole with my investigation glasses on and learned the following: the silence may not be because of some dangerous animal arriving but because something’s going wrong in the forest like die-off from some sort of disease, pesticides or poison in the ecosystem (this is wild) or a lack of food. These three things may mean the forest is struggling and that’s why it’s more silent than usual.

Was the forest silent when I arrived or did it go silent? I need to pay attention to that next time.

I also read that people believe that forests can change form going from our well-known areas to unfamiliar places, making us want to turn back and not go any further. This is one of the things I’ve felt while on my runs too. The same trails feel different and don’t look like they usually do. It sometimes feels like you’re lost even though you’ve gone down this path every week for the last two years. I read that some people believe that this feeling can mean that the forest is steering you away from danger. There are many real testimonies of people saying that this has happened to them, but it’s mainly in dense forests or dangerous trails, but that’s not my case.

We know that trees can’t get up and walk around to create this feeling of the forest looking different so we probably need to scrap that idea, but they can create subtle shifts through their underground root communication system also known as the wood wide web (incredible). Even if nothing is visibly moving, the forest is alive and it’s responding and adapting, reflecting subtle changes in tension and energy. Can we pick up on these changes though? You tell me.

I love Carl Sagan. I wish I could be him.

Let’s pause right here and quickly dive into some ancestral beliefs and folklore that describe forests shape-shifting because it’s fascinating.

The forest knows you’re there and it decides what you see.

Celtic and Druid Lore speaks of the Green Man, the spirit of the trees, who could confuse or mislead people who disrespected nature, making paths vanish or circle non-stop. He’s not evil though, he’s also a reminder that man is not above nature and is a symbol of rebirth in Spring. He offers wisdom and teaches those who need it. There are also forest spirits in German or Slavic folklore that would protect respectful travellers by guiding them with bright lights or animals.

Japanese folklore believes that forests are full of yokai and kami which are spirits that can warp time and space making you walk on for hours always taking you to the same place. There are also some kami (nature spirits) and white foxes (kitsune) that protect travellers and lost souls, guiding them to safety. Some sacred trees call the traveller to sit under it as protection too.

Shamanism believes in animistic landscapes where the forest has a will and can close in on themselves as protection against outsiders. If the traveller is not spiritually prepared, they will be blinded by the forest. Amazonian jungles are said to be alive through Madre Selva (mother jungle) and packed with spirits that can help guide you if your in balance with your spirituality or can make you get lost because it’s a spiritual test. For shamans, the jungle is a rite of passage but if you enter it arrogantly, Madre Selva may close the paths and shift the landscape’s shape, disorienting you and keeping you trapped. If you’re confused on your path, the jungle is mirroring how you feel inside, helping you to look at what needs healing.

All of these different spiritual beliefs come down to the same thing: nature being a place that brings out what we have buried inside of us. The forest can take us down the path we need to go down to learn and grow spiritually, and a lot of the time that means confusion, feeling lost, going in circles and having to face our fears until we find the exit.

Now, let’s get back to the the wood wide web because it’s incredible.

This underground network of fungi and roots allows trees to communicate, share resources or warn each other. The network’s scientific name is mycorrhizal network, but I personally prefer the wood wide web because it’s simply an awesome name. Is there anyone here that’s too young to know that I think it’s amazing because it’s similar to the world wide web (WWW.anywebpage.com)?

Older trees are called mother trees (of course they are) and they can send nutrients to younger or smaller trees that are in shaded areas or need some extra help to grow. They use fungi attached to their roots, with which they have a mutualistic relationship, connecting different trees together to get the nutrients from the mother trees to the other ones that need it. This is where it gets extra crazy because the fungi doesn’t do its work for free, they ask for carbohydrates (sugar) in return for being the messengers because fungi can’t photosynthesize and they use these sugars to live and grow. They basically want their lunch and dinner if they’re going to have to work. It’s incredible and beautiful. I’m in awe.

I bet you want to know more about this miracle happening beneath our feet. I’ve got you covered.

Mother trees prioritize helping genetically related trees before other ones which means that somehow they are able to identify and differentiate one from another. Let that sink in. Mother trees can basically recognize their babies, hello?

Mothers able to recognize their kin thanks to the chemicals trees release into the ground called root exudates. These exudates are a mix of sugars, amino acids, organic acids, enzymes and other things that trees release into the soil around them and the mother trees can distinguish the saplings that have similar root exudates to them, meaning that they are genetically related.

Another amazing fact is that saplings connected to a mother tree have a higher rate of survival which means that even trees need their mothers.

Interconnected Earth by Amelia Irausquin: etsy shop

I was telling you about this because of the forest picking up on changes and giving out warning signals so let’s talk about that next.

Will trees send out a signal because you, a human, are walking in the forest? Not really, so this probably means that the forest doesn’t go silent because I’m passing by on a run, right? Let’s see.

When I walk through the forest the soil vibrates and the magic underground network can detect my presence, but unless I’m harming the tree by cutting it or breaking off one of its branches, it won’t have a rapid defense response. I guess I’m like any other animal that’s just passing by.

That being said, trees detect the sudden silence but only take action and react if there’s some sort of damage (aka injuries) by releasing volatile organic compounds that other trees nearby can pick up on. So, now we know that they don’t specifically react to my presence but can pick up on the sudden silence, you might be wondering how they can hear that the forest has fallen silent.

It turns out that they react to the lack of usual sound and movement. Let’s just say that a normal day to day in the forest is full of birds chirping and flying, insects moving, moles digging, and rabbits bopping so when it all stops — — — They say hey, where did the music and the vibrations go? Everyone upstairs must be hiding from something, sound the alarms.

How long do you think it takes a tree to realise something’s wrong up above and react?

The volatile organic compounds (jasmonates, salicylates, green leaf volatiles, terpenoids, ethylene…) that are released into the air are the fastest reaction, taking only a few minutes, while the slowest response is the magic that happens underground in the wood wide web. In reality, it’s all magic, I’m just in awe of the network that lives under the forest floor. This underground reaction can take from a few hours to a couple of days, however it is the most long lasting.

Plants and bushes can also detect very quickly specific vibrations like an animal chewing on its leaves and send out a signal within seconds or minutes. We’ve been talking about trees, but plants act in pretty similar ways to trees. It’s estimated that over ninety percent of land plants have some sort of relationship with the beautiful wood world web (the mycorrhizal network), so let’s just say that trees and plants are going through the same processes and are all connected.

Simona Kossak is well worth reading about

Once I realised that the trees weren’t the ones saying “hey, Emily is running through our woods”, I started looking into the birds and insects.

Birds can change their call, stop singing or fly away when they detect human presence (aka me huffing and puffing in my running shoes) because I am a big predator in their survival-driven minds. I bet they don’t think that when I’m giving them bird feed in the dead of winter…

Insects also stop making noise when they detect vibrations in the floor, air movement or shadows. I guess I’m a big vibration, moving a lot of air and projecting a long, fast shadow over their world as I run above them.

The bird and the insect’s responses create a sort of ripple effect throughout the forest so everything notices a change. Apparently even predators pick up on these changes and interpret that there could be a bigger predator than them nearby (me), so now I come to think about it, this is probably playing in my favor because if there is a wild boar, it probably won’t want to attack me because it thinks I’m some crazy, fit, boar eating monster. Cool.

The cycle closes with me noticing that the whole forest is talking about me making me feel watched. I am being watched. As a matter of fact, I’m being surveilled and creeped out with such success that I’m forced to keep on running as if I were the one being hunted through the creepy silent forest until the birds signal that the two legged, strange, stick human is gone. Birds have specific all clear! calls that I’ll need to pay attention to next time too.

When they want to signal that something’s wrong, they use short, rapid, repetitive calls while their “all’s good” signals are more like a constant song. Humans can actually subconsciously pick up on these different calls. We’re wired to understand them and take action based on what we’re being told. I say subconsciously because this stems from when we used to actually be a part of the forest instead of living in blocks of concrete far away from nature.

Our amygdala (the part of our brain that screams: danger!!!!) chills out when we hear birds singing their all’s good songs because it means that there are no predators around and we can have a siesta in peace. The short, rapid, repetitive bird calls tell us that something’s wrong which creates tension, sending us into fight or flight mode. I guess we’re wired the same way birds are but we pretend we’re not.

My non scientific conclusion is that I’m the one that makes the birds panic, the bird’s danger!!! call makes my amygdala panic, I go into a state of fight or flight, my already high heart rate from running spikes even more, I feel watched (which I am), so I run the hell out of the silent forest without looking back, making my Strava pace a tad more impressive.

If you have any book or documentary recommendations that go into great detail about this sort of thing, please let me know what they’re called so I can geek out even more about Nature. It makes me so happy.