We Ignore the Wisdom of Pando at Our Peril

Aspen trees are beautiful--golden fluttery leaves and graceful white bark. But they are more than a pretty face. Did you know that a grove of aspen trees is actually a single organism, connected underground by a vast network of roots? And that they are able to share resources and communicate with each other via their roots? Yes, they "talk" to each other! Check out Richard Powers' beautiful book "The Overstory" to learn more.

Aspens are incredibly resilient. They can routinely live to be more than 100 years old, and their root systems can live even longer--well past 5,000 years. The oldest aspen colony in the world is an astonishing 80,000 years old! Located in Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park, this aspen colony even has its own name, Pando:

An aspen colony, like Pando, has a lot to teach us. Aspens are a model of the superpower of community and cooperation. They weather adversity, such as fires and other disasters, together. They don't compete against each other; they work together to survive and even thrive. When one aspen is struggling from injury, lack of nutrients, or illness, the colony helps out that individual tree. The aspens know that the health of the grove depends on the health of each individual tree. The flow of energy throughout Pando via their roots ensures survival of the entire colony. It's not about the survival of the fittest, it's about the survival of all.

Quantum theory suggests we, too, as humans are energetically interconnected. Energy connecting two people is a subset of a family's energetic connection, which is a subset of a larger community such as a neighborhood, which is a subset of a city, and a subset of a country. One person's happiness or healing affects another's; likewise, one person's pain or suffering can spread to another person. Our roots are intertwined.

It seems as though we humans behave more and more as if we are separate, and even pitted against each other. We value competition, and ferociously guard our resources of wealth, position, and status. We observe the vast differences in the prosperity between people and try mightily to improve our own fortunes. We operate as silos and grow more and more isolated from each other.

We have lost sight of the truth that our roots deep below the surface of our bodies, the faces we show to the world, are in fact, joined. This is to our peril.

We would do well to learn from the aspens.