Back in September, I found this book in a broken drystone wall up near Redmires reservoirs. It had been placed there by the vlogger, Jack Roscoe whose channel is called "Northern Introvert". Fortunately, I was the first of his followers to get there.
Well, I must admit that a science-based book about fungi is not the kind of book I would normally pick but because of the delightful circumstances by which I acquired "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake, I felt almost compelled to read it.
Merlin Sheldrake is an expert mycologist and passionate about his chosen area of study. He attended The University of Cambridge and later undertook his PhD study of underground fungal networks in Panama's tropical forests as a predoctoral research fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
He is not some sort of New Age charlatan promoting magic mushrooms. He is fundamentally a respected scientist who has discovered that the more he studies mycylial networks and fruiting fungi, the more he has yet to learn. Mycology is a branch of scientific enquiry that has not been greatly encouraged nor well-funded in our universities. Compared with say botany it is very much a poor cousin.
Honey fungus I spotted in a Lincolnshire churchyard ten years ago.
Just the briefly fruiting tip of an underground mycylial network.
Part of the problem with it is simply that so much of what you need to look at is below ground.
For me as a non-scientist there were sections of "Entangled Life" that I found hard to follow but I stuck with it to gain the reward of insights that I would never have predicted. I felt some of Sheldrake's enthusiasm and awe as well as his intellectual agility.
One of the things that I shall remember about this book is how our planet's plant life is invariably connected with mycylial networking. From grasses to mighty trees there is a powerful interdependent symbiosis happening just below our feet but is little known and by no means fully understood.
"The Guardian" said this when the book first came out:
A “door-opener” book is one with a specialist subject in which it finds pathways leading everywhere. This is a genre devoted to connectedness in all directions,
and is one well suited to our times. Sheldrake’s book is a very fine example.
While travelling on a train recently, the ticket collector noticed what I was reading and remarked, "That's a bloody brilliant book!" and upon finishing it I agree with him - even though I admit that I found the reading process hard going. Of the 358 pages in "Entangled Life", no less than a hundred are given over to acknowledgements, notes, an extensive bibliography and a comprehensive index.
Merlin Sheldrake
