Sentient Conversations

Abstract

We live in a world of reckoning. In history, in politics, in culture, oppressive paradigms are being overturned and new perspectives are unfolding. One significant site(s) of reckoning are the modern, imperial, and colonial constructions of the environment that have served to silence and limit the voice of the non-human world, and our collective understanding of it. In the spirit of this moment, I begin this conversation with a powerful reconsideration:everything is sentient—soil, plants, algae, fungi, trees, birds, worms, rocks, and more. Sophisticated and rootbound, trees cooperate with their kin and communicate their needs. Remembering past events, perceiving and mounting defenses from impending droughts and fire seasons, trees have inseparable bonds with others (Simard 2021). Similarly, lichen are mutually arranged in complex relations to help one another survive and thrive, and provide complex nutrients to the ground and tree lined canopies of Douglas fir, cedars, and spruce (Wohlleben 2016). Michael Hathaway and Willoughby Arévalo articulate how mycorrhizal networks communicate, make decisions, and learn ways to move, coordinate, and tell other fungi about lurking dangers and other events (2023). Sentient and formidable, mycelium feed one another through branched structures and tubes, releasing and responding to chemical signals using amino acids (Hathaway and Arévalo2023).