Superabundant: Merlin Sheldrake explores Oregon coastal forest fungi

Merlin Sheldrake, biologist and author of “Entangled Life” loves getting down to ground level, to see the world from the mushroom’s perspective. “Soils are deep and complex places. Like when I walk around on the soil, I like to think of it like I'm walking on the surface of an ocean of land and that that ocean of land stretches down deep, deep underground and is full of life,” he says. Walking the Oregon coastal forests of Camp Westwind in Otis, Oregon with Superabundant newsletter writer–and fellow biologist–Heather Arndt Anderson, Sheldrake pointed out the hidden communication networks that permeate northwest forests. “These coniferous forests we see here in Oregon, those have particular types of fungal relationship and bacterial relationships …and they in turn shape the soil that they grow in and the fungus shape the conditions of the plant so it's a kind of feedback system,” says Sheldrake. “We live in a communicating world, some of that communication is visible and apparent to us, and most of it passes under our feet and over our heads.”