What the Ghost Pipes Said: Healing Our Kinship Blindness

The Impossible Ghost Pipe Party: Or, What Can Happen When You're Nested

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“When human families become a nested species, the parties they will throw

will defy the imagination, odds, and expectations of a Dominant Worldview.”

– What the Ghost Pipes Said

In six decades of wandering into the woods, I have learned to wait patiently and walk softly until I am welcomed before proceeding into the home of my Earth family allies. No stomping down hiking trails intent on arriving at a destination and missing the waving tendrils of fern fronds and shy wildflowers. If you “walk” in the woods with me, prepare to stand, sit, breathe, lay down, and listen most of the journey. The snail’s pace is worth the effort, as it gives Nature a chance to heal culturally normalized kinship blindness.

While kinship blindness is my neologism, the phrase to describe our modern inclination to disregard plants – as sentient – is “plant blindness”. Robin Wall Kimmerer describes “plant blindness” as a widespread human tendency to overlook or ignore the plant life around us, seeing it as “green wallpaper” rather than as individual, vibrant beings. Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, attributes this phenomenon to a colonial, industrial worldview that has deliberately “it-ed” the natural world and driven a profound forgetting of our ancestral connection to plants.

Many years ago, as a master naturalist, I led school groups on trails at a state forestry center. Well, I sometimes led. Usually, I brought up the rear of the long line of children swinging their heads around to follow the ranger’s pointing and shouting out which tree was here or there, and watch out for the widowmaker (a dead tree or limb leaning precariously on another tree in the woods).

Inevitably, the children left behind with me were the ones who found it impossible to go quickly through the woods, passing on invitations from plants to say hello.  I could sense the invitations as well, and watched with fascination as the stragglers looked as if they were falling into an enchanted realm of Christmas ferns around their sneakers. They were.

“Yes, let’s say hello. See the rows of stocking-shaped leaves hanging from the fern’s midline? This is why it is called a Christmas fern,” I would offer, acknowledging their need to connect before catching up with the group.

We need Nature connection at all ages.

Here at Kindred, we explore our Kinship Worldview and how consciously cultivating our connection with Nature is the first component in our Evolved Nest: the science of how we can reclaim our humanity (see all nine component below). When the Evolved Nest is provisioned to children and to adults, our full humanity is developed and expressed. Through the Evolved Nest we develop the Kinship Worldview, and through our Kinship Worldview, we understand the life-affirming value of nestedness.

I have shared in past posts – What the Dragonfly Said and What the Mother Tree Said – how my relational attunement to the natural world on my small farm in Virginia allows Nature to serve as one of our many nonprofit partners. In the Nesting Ambassador program this summer, I shared with the international group of beta-testers the story of Kelly Wendorf gifting us Kindred Magazine in 2009, an Australian publication originally and the world’s first global eco-parenting magazine.

I shared with our beta-testers how an anxiety-ridden nap among dandelions in the back pasture yielded insight for how to proceed with our mission as an alternative media platform. Two slides from my presentation are shared on this page: How Kindred Works with Nature, and How Nature Works with Kindred. Here is What the Dandelions Said:

How to Share a Consciousness-Raising, Emergent Message

1. Wait until the seed/message is ripe.
2. Disburse the seed/message far and wide.
3. Accept that you have no control over where the seed/message goes or if the soil it lands upon is ready.
4. Repeat.

Sixteen years later, as a 501C3 nonprofit, we steward both the award-winning, holistic scientific theory of the Evolved Nest and Kinship Worldview, while championing the cultural creatives, wayfinders, new cycle makers, and village builders who bring our Evolved Nest to life (as an emergent praxis).

Kindred World’s ecology of initiatives and projects serve necessary functions. Currently, many of these websites are being integrated into the Nested World site and future home of the Nesting Ambassador Program. (You can sign-up now for our Nesting Ambassador program’s waitlist for 2026. Learn more about the program here.)

So, What Did the Ghost Pipes Say?

This week, I wandered into the forest near our home for no reason at all and with little awareness of why I would seek out the part of the woods the furthest from my home when I was still tired from traveling the week before. Not far down a trail near a perennial stream and marshland, a line of bone white Ghost Pipe wildflowers appeared across the trail path. Only a few times in my life have I been fortunate enough to encounter this shy native plant. However, on this sleepy walk, instead of a few stems emerging from leaf mulch, there were dozens of clumps, lines, singles, and pairs of the rare flowers along the trail, on the trail, by trees, and in unusual line formations. I sat down carefully to take in what I realized must be a Ghost Pipe party (see the video below).

What are the chances? How is this possible?

Ghost Pipes are a unique mycoheterotrophic plant, as they don’t photosynthesize but instead obtain nutrients from a symbiotic fungal network linked to tree roots. They usually appear in a solitary group of a dozen flowers clumping together and hidden in leaf litter. Many people mistake them for fungus, as they lack chlorophyl.  The conditions Ghost Pipes need to thrive are well-defined by their unique biology. The conditions for them to throw a Ghost Pipe party must be extremely rare, but here they are. I put my head on the ground and waited.

What did the Ghost Pipes say?

1. Come to the woods, slowly, and find out for yourself how Life is doing while human consciousness experiences another expected and foretold contraction.

2. We are Earth family allies. Feel free to lay your head on the soft ground for support.
3. Environmental conditions are everything. We thrive because our habitat is perfect for our thriving.
4. You can create conditions for your species’ thriving as well. Hint: It’s called the Evolved Nest.
5. Get together and have parties often.
6. The parties the human family will throw when humans are a nested species will defy the odds and expectations of a Dominant Worldview.

Later, I returned to the house to grab my camera, fully awake now, and paused at my computer to ask: What are the chances of seeing 100 Ghost Pipes in one area? The ubiquitous AI replied promptly: “less than 5%”. It would be near impossible for a species with such specified needs to thrive outside of their evolved developmental niche, their Evolved Nest.

If you need a jump start to imagining how the restoration of our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing, our evolved nest, could provide the needed environment for the human family to overcome our current meta-crisis, take a few moments – less than 30! – and watch the Evolved Nest’s trilogy of films: Breaking the Cycle, The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children, and Reimagining Humanity. They can be found here.

Here is what we need to thrive, and naturally develop our Kinship Worldview:

Moving Toward a Kinship Worldview: Healing Our Plant, and Animal, Blindness

Are we healing our kinship blindness?

The last decade shows cracks opening in the Dominant Worldview — a liminal space where Kinship principles are re-entering mainstream consciousness. The list below, courtesy of AI, shows how humanity is inching its way toward a Kinship Worldview, and healing our plant and animal blindness. The list is grouped items into Science, Law & Policy, and Organizations/Initaitives.

The list is a by-year roundup of major milestones (2015–2025) that advanced the evidence for — and public/policy recognition of — animal (and, more cautiously, plant) sentience.

2025

• Science (plants/animals):
  • Plants & insects “listening”: first evidence of acoustic interactions — moths avoid laying eggs on water-stressed tomato plants by cueing to the plants’ ultrasonic “clicks” (eLife). Reuters
• Organizations:
  • Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience (JCCAS) announced at LSE; launch slated for autumn 2025; inaugural director Prof. Jonathan Birch. Mandate: develop scientific methods for studying animal feelings and translate into policy. LSE

2024

• Science (animals):
  • Sperm whales show contextual & combinatorial structure in their clicks (“codas”) — a rare, language-like communication system (Nature Communications). PMC
• Law & Policy:
  • Belgium amends its Constitution: authorities must ensure protection and welfare of animals as sentient beings. Le Monde.freurogroupforanimals.org
  • Washington State (USA) enacts the world’s first ban on octopus farming (H.B. 1153). California follows with its own ban and prohibition on selling farmed octopus. These cite octopus intelligence/sentience and acute welfare risks. Washington State LegislatureWashington State House DemocratsAnimal Legal Defense Fund+1Food & Wine
• Declarations:
  • New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness released (NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness) — a scientist-authored statement that many non-human animals (including some invertebrates) likely have conscious experiences, urging precaution in policy and research. The Times
• Initiatives:
  • Project CETI advances AI-assisted decoding of sperm-whale communication and field tags for gentle whale monitoring. Harvard SEASAP News

2023

• Science (plants):
  • Plants emit ultrasonic sounds under stress (drought, cutting); machine-learning classifiers distinguish stressors (Cell). Follow-ups and explainers from museums and press. (This is evidence of complex physiology/signaling — not consensus proof of plant consciousness.) CellPubMedNatural History Museum
• Debate (plants):
  • Target article + commentaries on plant sentience in the journal Animal Sentience, reflecting active scientific debate. ScienceDirect

2022

• Law & Policy (UK):
  • Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 receives Royal Assent — animals are recognized in law as sentient; establishes the Animal Sentience Committee. (Scope includes vertebrates and, after review, cephalopods & decapod crustaceans.) Wikipedia
• Scholarship:
  • Browning & Birch publish a cross-disciplinary Teaching & Learning Guide summarizing the state of animal sentience science. PMC

2021

• Science that shifted policy (UK):
  • LSE independent review (Birch et al.) evaluates >300 studies and concludes all cephalopods and decapod crustaceans should be regarded as sentient for welfare law; UK Government accepts and extends the Bill to include them. LSEGOV.UK
• Law & Policy (Spain):
  • Law 17/2021 reforms the Civil Code to recognize animals as sentient beings rather than things. derechoanimal.infoEL PAÍS English

2020

• Science (birds):
  • Neural correlate of sensory consciousness in crows: single-neuron activity in the avian pallium tracks subjective perception, indicating sensory consciousness in a non-mammalian brain (Science). Science

2019–2018

• Science (plants):
  • A series of studies/reviews shows anesthetics suppress plant electrical signaling & movements (e.g., Venus flytrap), clarifying what these effects do — and don’t — imply about plant consciousness. (Scholars caution: anesthesia effects ≠ evidence of plant “pain.”) Oxford AcademicPMCSpringerLink
• Organizations/Research programs:
  • Wild Animal Initiative (2019) forms to advance science on wild-animal welfare, including sentience-relevant measures. earthspecies.org

2017–2016 (foundation stones inside your 10-year window)

• Organizations:
  • Sentience Institute (2017) launches to study moral circle expansion and societal attitudes toward animal sentience. ResearchGate
  • Animal Sentience (journal) begins publishing target articles and peer commentaries on what/when/how non-human animals feel and think (2016–). WellBeing Repository

2015 (exactly ten years back)

• Law & Policy:
  • New Zealand updates the Animal Welfare Act to explicitly “recognise that animals are sentient,” and bans cosmetic testing on animals. Legislation.govt.nz+1
  • France amends its Civil Code — animals are “living beings gifted with sentience.” World Animal Protection
  • Québec passes Bill 54 — animals are sentient beings and not things (Civil Code & new Animal Welfare and Safety Act). Publications du Québec

Your examples (confirmed)

• Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience (LSE) — announced March 25, 2025; opening autumn 2025. LSE
• New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness — 2024 release with cross-disciplinary signatories; argues for widespread animal consciousness and a precautionary policy stance. The Times

What these milestones add up to

• Animals: Broadening legal recognition (NZ, Spain, Belgium; UK Act) and policy shifts about invertebrates followed specific evidence reviews (LSE 2021), plus rising scientific consensus that many vertebrates and some invertebrates (e.g., octopuses, lobsters, crabs) are sentient. LSEGOV.UKLe Monde.fr
• Plants: Rapidly growing evidence of sophisticated signaling and behavior (e.g., ultrasonic emissions; anesthesia-sensitive electrophysiology). Sentience in plants remains actively debated, with prominent cautionary analyses urging against over-interpretation. CellSpringerLink

Join Lisa at the Ghost Pipe Party