Trees tell Stories

I’ve been reading Sophie Pinkham’s new work of nonfiction, The Oak and the Larch. It’s a study of Russia’s forests over the centuries. Trees tell stories and Pinkham had me immersed in the complicated history of Russia’s relationship to them. Sometimes the forests were friends, for example, when they slowed down the Mongol invasion, or hid partisan armies. Other times they were to be cut down and exploited ... used to build ships or buildings.  And still some survived. She writes, “Some of the centenarian lindens still remembered the farms that had once dotted the landscape. Only trees had such long memories.” (p. 222) 

An old linden remembering?  In front of the former secret police centre in
Zhytomyr, Ukraine, site of my grandfather's 1937 interrogation and execution.

:

After reading her book, I found myself yearning to be amongst our local trees here in Manitoba. The opportunity to meander alone through some wet urban woods just the other day was a welcome way to recharge after a difficult week. In between moments of silence, I heard birds chirping and frogs croaking. Wildlife, including deer, rabbits and squirrels, stared at me as if daring me to come closer. 

Along a trail in the Assiniboine Forest

A small, yellow splotched bird skipped ahead of me, determined to lead me on. I spotted wild strawberry flowers and everywhere bright green spurts of new growth. It’s happening—again—spring.  I’m grateful for the natural settings in our city and for the resilience of trees. Leaving the woods, I felt calmer and more at peace with myself and the world. They truly are our friends.

Can you find two deer?

So many stories growing in a forest. Joyce Kilmer said it best: “I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree.” 

Beech Trees and Book Woods

Beech trees along Baltic

The trees are awakening here on the prairies and like every spring, I marvel at their magic.

Jane Gifford’s The Wisdom of Trees: Mysteries, Magic and Medicine came out back in 2000.  One section tells about the beech tree. I’ve not encountered beech trees here in Manitoba. Maybe our prairie winters are too severe. 

Maybe that’s why I noticed them when cycling along the Baltic back in 2019. Beech forests are found throughout Europe.  I welcomed their cooling shade after yet another sloping hill turned steeper than our intrepid leader promised. It was in the towering, gloomy beech woods that I tried to imagine the Second World War refugees hiding from their enemies.

Buchenwald, meaning 'beech woods', has become synonymous with the Buchenwald Concentration camp, about ten kilometers northwest of Weimar. Once known for its beech trees, almost 250,000 people were brutalized by the Nazis in that beech tree prison. 

Shade in my Garden

But the beech tree has more positive associations. Beech tree seeds, or nuts, were used during hard times to create ‘ersatz kaffee’ and even used as a tobacco substitute. Beech tree oil and butter is a common by-product and beech wood is favoured for carving wooden spoons and other household utensils. 

But the most interesting thing about beech trees—for a book-lover—is that the word, beech, comes from the Anglo-Saxon word boc, which became the German word Buch. Buch became buchstabe, meaning letter of the alphabet.  So once Buchenwald was not a place of horror. Once a Buchenwald was a forest of books. A library.  Before modern paper production, beech wood could be used for early writing tablets. And, as Gifford points out, beech tree are great for carving lovers' initials.

Even if I can’t grow beech trees in my garden, I’m still appreciating their impact. Like Cicero said, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

Part of my home library