2026-04: Neuron to Branch

April marked the beginning of The Shape of a Forest, an exploration of the structural similarities between a neuron and a tree. Dendrites became leaves, the soma a branch, the axon a trunk, myelin bark, terminals roots, and synapses mycelial connections. From that simple analogy emerged a larger question: what if we understood the mind not as a machine to optimize, but as a forest we have grown? The project began developing a language for observing how experience becomes habit, how ideas become protected and interconnected, and how we might cultivate our mental landscapes more deliberately.