White magic

By Larkin Schmiedl

As far back as I can remember, I visited this little grove, climbing in the branches, jumping from tree to tree, or nestling down on the yellow bed of fall leaves strewn on autumn's forest floor. Going into the little birch grove was like visiting some strange ivory temple. The place was wild and magical, always drawing me close throughout the year.

I remember the first cup of birch tea very well. A cold winter wind had snapped off one of the upper branches of the larger birches. During a winter walk, we found it lying on the ground. Grandfather thanked the forest for the much-needed gift and turned away to the grove's edge to build a fire. When the water boiled, he added a handful of tiny twigs and bark shavings and let it steep for near a half hour. There was a tremendous sense of summer to the taste.

-Tom Brown, Jr.

In all seasons birch has captivated me. Its white slender body growing amongst clusters of others like ghosts, it accompanied my childhood in the Southern Ontario Carolinian forest that stretches all the way down to Georgia. This forest smells humid and is full of many types of plants. Only one tiny fraction of it exists in Canada at the southernmost tip of the country.

Birch followed me north. Summers, we’d drive up as a family for hours to the cottage, the four of us in the car, with the landscape mottled in sunlight before our eyes. It seemed to break out into pine and birch almost exclusively. Birch's tall straight body held fluttering green leaves that reflected light like tiny moving mirrors against a saturated blue sky.

All there was to do was to stare at these trees, walk in bare feet on pine-needle-covered soil, catch frogs and go swimming.

When I got older, birch tracked me to the far reaches of Northwestern Ontario, where it occasionally kept me company as I planted baby conifers in clear-cuts. It was the summer after my first year university. I stayed with my friend Dave in Kenora. His family's house was on the big lake, and birch stands lined the water’s shore, taking up space in whatever sunny patches they could. Birch is a first-story tree, and does not tolerate shade. As the forest matures, its white body disappears from all but the bright patches.

I crossed the Atlantic. Birch was there still.

I was working at various farms in Wales and ended up on one situated on an old Roman road. Tyr, a 30-something-year-old woman with blue eyes and iron-straight blonde hair that fell just below her chin owned the place with her husband. Tyr was tall and lanky, and by turns fun or moody. Her farmhouse was made of stone and she kept doves. Her big dog was named Ratty.

The other farm volunteer was a South African twenty-year-old named Jono with cropped brown hair who spoke with an accent.

It was Tyr who taught me to tap birch trees for their sap.

In the long dry dead grasses of her March field on a cloudy day, Tyr and I set out toward the stand of birches holding three four-litre glass jugs, a few of lengths of plastic tubing, and a mechanical drill.

We were going to use birch sap to make wine.

In spring, the sap rises before anything else is happening. Before the buds can begin to leaf, before most other things begin to grow, this silent migration of sugar inside the tissues of trees is taking place. You have to catch it while you can, or you won't get any sap.

Tyr handed me the drill and told me to set it against the birch’s trunk, pointed ever-so-slightly at an upward angle. I began to crank the handle, chewing into the birch's woody flesh with the metal bit. It smelled fresh.

Birch has soft wood and is not difficult to cut or drill.

When the bit was buried an inch deep, we pulled out. Fitting the plastic tubing into it, we ran the other end down into the mouth of the glass bottle that sat nestled securely on the twig-and-leaf covered spring soil below. We did this with three trees.

That night, I slept in the grove under the stars.

For the next three days I checked the sap level in the bottles at the feet of the birch morning and night. One bottle remained dry while the other two were filling at different rates with a clear liquid. After three days, we pulled them off. One was almost completely full and the other a third.

We had enough. We took the bottles inside. I brought the sap to my lips and it tasted mildly sugary, but mostly like fresh water. Following the recipe Tyr gave me, I boiled the sap in a huge metal pot on the stove, stirring it for a couple of hours until some of the water evaporated off. We added a few ingredients: sugar, lemon zest and yeast.

We poured it into bottles, but I was never to try it. It was March, and I was leaving in a week to head to my next farm. Birch wine takes about six months to ferment.

When I think of birch, words like simple and enticing come to mind. It feels pure somehow. It has been by my side in so many places.

Birch has been a keystone plant in much of the country now known as Canada for thousands of years. As red cedar is on the coast, birch is across the rest of this land. First Peoples considered the paper birch, Betula papyrifera, indispensable. They made birch bark canoes and created baskets and baby cradles from large sheets of the waterproof white bark.

Birch sap can be drunk as a spring tonic, and in fact still is in many Eastern European countries today, where it is sold commercially. In Finland there is even a tooth cleaner made from birch. Birch syrup is also made, although it's considered less valuable than maple because its sugar content is only one per cent as compared with the maple's 2.5.

It’s a beautiful tree with many uses. The ground inner bark provides flour, the outer bark a brown dye. Its bark is resinous and makes glue and an excellent fire starter. The resin even gives you a buzz if you chew it. Soap and shampoo can be made from the leaves, as well as a tea to treat skin sores.

Birch has followed me far, and exists as many different species around the world. In the Canadian landscape, it's iconic, although not necessarily recognized as such. The pines and the maples get all the glory, but this tree that will grow quickly in clear-cuts and in burn sites, along roadsides, rivers and lakes, and in forest clearings, verily scintillates with magic. Just throw your head back and watch the leaves move against the blue sky on a summer day, and you will know what I mean. Run your hands through the catkins lazily as they hang from lissome grey branches and you will feel magic. I promise.

-30-

Works consulted

Ashbury's Aromatherapy. Creative uses for therapeutic Essential Oils. Richmond, B.C. Pamphlet.

(their website: www.ashburys.com)

Brown, Tom Jr. 1985. Tom Brown's Field Guide: Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants. 242 pp. Berkley Books: New York.

Parish, Roberta, Ray Coupé & Dennis Lloyd (eds.). 1996. Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia and the Inland Northwest. 464 pp. Lone Pine: Vancouver.

Pojar, J. & A. MacKinnon (eds.). 2004. Revised Plants of Coastal British Columbia including Washington, Oregon & Alaska. 528pp. Lone Pine: Vancouver.

Safford, L. O., John C. Bjorkbom & John C. Zasada. Betula papyrifera Marsh. http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/betula/papyrifera.htm

Wild Cards: All Ages, Edible Wild Foods. 1991. Wild Foods Co., Inc.

Viereck, Eleanor G. 1990. Alaska's Wilderness Medicines: Healthful Plants of the Far North. 112 pp. Alaska Northwest Books: Anchorage & Seattle.