The Nurse Log: Recipes for Community Care
Forests for me are a place of peace. A space where I am able to disconnect from the chaos of my everyday life. Yet, while the forest is a tranquil escape for me, it is anything but silent for the great trees which call it home.
As Peter Wohlleben states in his book The Hidden Life of Trees, “ …the most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other.” They communicate through a network called the wood wide web. It is an underground mycorrhizal network which keeps trees tapped into one another. Through this web nutrients are shared, aid is provided to those who need it, and messages are sent between forest inhabitants. Care comes not only from the trees which are still alive and upright, but also from trees that have fallen as well. These are referred to as nurse logs. Nurse logs help to provide shade, nutrients, water and protection to seedlings as they decay. It is a network of care in constant motion.
This mycorrhizal network and the nurse log is a great representation of mutual aid. Mutual aid, as author and activist Dean Spade puts it, “is the radical act of caring for one another while working together to change the world.” Over the course of my fall semester, I put together an Informal Community Book Club series and discussion group focused on mutual aid. Through this series I hosted a discussion group. The group discussion attracted a variety of individuals who helped trade knowledge much like the trading of nutrients with trees. Aid can also look like helping a neighbor clean up their yard after a storm but it can also be just sitting with them and providing advice. Mutual aid is something we don’t realize that we are partaking in every day. It is choosing to show up for one another in whatever capacity we can.
What are ways we can tap into our community’s wood wide web? Like the vast forms of care trees provide to one another we too can show up for our community in unique ways. Nutrient trading can be through actual sharing of food but it can also be through the trading of skills through a workshop or one on one teaching. We do not have to be a mighty tree bursting through the canopy everyday. We can be the person that holds the umbrella when it starts to rain or provides a warm hug when feelings get too much.
Recipes for community care can be exact measurements of ingredients but it can also be sampling what tastes good together. The most important thing is that we approach the recipe with love and put as much of our care and heart into the outcome as we can at any given moment.
May we continue to find ways to decontaminate our world.
May we continue to enter spaces with love.
May we offer and receive mutual aid.