It started for me as a simple necessity. When my son was just under 2 and my daughter not yet 4, I took them on an expedition to the base of Mount Kenya in Africa, to study how fungi help trees defend themselves against the elephants and giraffes who feed on them. My son was still nursing, and I didn’t want to stop working. My husband, a poet, came along to stay with them at base camp.
As time went on, I began to embrace the decision to bring my kids with me on my expeditions, not as an exigency of parenting but as a kind of feminist act. When meeting other scientists in the field, the reaction was typically the same: They assumed my husband was leading the expedition. Once the facts were established, researchers were supportive and even willing to lend a hand.
Looking back at those expeditions now — after more than a dozen, in far-flung areas around the globe — I understand that bringing them into the field was more than a rebellion: Their presence on those trips also changed the way I do science, and for the better.
I started tasting soils in the field — a technique I now use to notice subtle differences across ecosystems — only after seeing my kids eat dirt. Children have an uncanny ability to make local friends quickly; many of those new friends have led me to obscure terrain and hidden fungal oases that I otherwise would never have come across. And my kids’ naïve minds routinely force me to rethink old assumptions by asking questions that are simultaneously absurd and profound. Can you taste clouds? Do fungi dream? How loud are our footsteps underground?
What can feel like an inconvenience is often a blessing in disguise. Children force the patience that scientific discovery demands. Last year, my kids and I traveled to Lesotho, in southern Africa. Collecting fungi in such a rugged landscape required horses, guides and months of precise planning. But my daughter caught the flu. Rather than mapping underground fungal life, we spent the week in a hut in a highland village with no running water or electricity, eating fermented sorghum. As the days ticked by, I began to panic, thinking of the fungi that would remain unsampled.
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