Books & Boots at Barbour Woods Swamp Trail: Entangled Life
Date: 10/26/2024
Time: 10:00 am-11:30 am
Please join us for our next Books & Boots hike on Saturday, October 26 at 10:00 a.m. We will hike the Barbour Woods Swamp Trail under the leadership of Hartley Mead and Bina Thomson as we discuss Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake. It is not necessary to have read the book first and all hiking abilities are welcome.
Meet at the Barbour Woods Trailhead at 75 Lovers Lane, Norfolk. Bina Thomson from the Norfolk Library and Hartley Mead from the Norfolk Land Trust will be waiting to greet people. Wear appropriate hiking attire.
Please register below. Entangled is available at 29 libraries throughout Connecticut. If our copy is checked out and you would like to request a copy through inter-library loan, please contact Norfolk Library’s Front Desk Circulation at 860-542-5075, ext. 2.
More about the book:
In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of ‘intelligence’, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties, which have influenced societies since antiquity, have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. The ability of fungi to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web’, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet they live their lives largely out of sight, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.
Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.