The Older Conversation
by Don Ollsin
Roughly 700 million years ago, fungi began colonizing the land. Long before forests covered the continents, fungal networks spread through rock and soil, helping create the conditions that made terrestrial plant life possible. Hundreds of millions of years later, plants followed, forming intimate partnerships with fungi that continue today beneath nearly every forest, meadow, and garden. Together they transformed the surface of the Earth, creating soils, moderating climate, and giving rise to the living landscapes we now call home.
Against this backdrop of deep time, human history occupies only a brief moment. Languages emerge and evolve. Cultures rise and change. Religions, economies, and political systems appear and disappear. In my own lifetime, I have watched the world move from radio to television, from television to the internet, from the internet to social media, and now into the age of artificial intelligence. Human consensus reality—the shared world we create through language, beliefs, customs, and technology—can reorganize with astonishing speed.
Yet the biological world moves to a different rhythm. A cedar does not follow social media. A mushroom does not respond to economic trends. The partnership between fungi and plants has continued for hundreds of millions of years, regardless of the stories humans tell about the world. Reality extends far beyond the realities we collectively agree upon.
The EarthSong "Say Hello" Practice offers a simple way to notice this difference. When I pause to greet a plant, I step for a moment out of the rapidly changing human conversation and into an older one. The plant is no longer a commodity, a landscape feature, or the background to my day. It becomes a living participant in a relationship that has been unfolding since long before our species arrived.
That small shift in attention changes more than the moment. It reminds me that human consensus reality is only one layer of a much larger living world. Every hello becomes an invitation to remember the older conversation—one that has continued for hundreds of millions of years and is still waiting for our participation.
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Don Ollsin is an herbalist, teacher, and environmental educator who has spent more than 50 years exploring the relationships between people and plants. His work has been shaped by herbal medicine, Ayurveda, shamanic practice, environmental education, and the study of attention and consciousness.
Through his new EarthSong project, Don invites people into a simple daily practice: pause, say hello to a plant, and notice what happens. His work explores how small acts of relationship can gradually transform the way we experience ourselves and the living world.