Mid-January in Ireland. All is cold and grey. The frost thawed into a constant, dull, greyness, bitterly cold and still. I’ve spent my days with the fire at my back and my nights under piles of blankets, white down, and deep green velvet, wishing for spring. But it is not time yet, a few weeks more. We are still in the dreaming of winter, our mammalian bodies still craving sleep, warm hearty foods and the deep, true rest so denied us by a capitalist system which would promote vigorous exercise, crash diets and constant work even now in the belly of the year. I’ve allowed myself to say no this year, normally I do keep January as quiet as I can but this year I’ve made it quieter still. And so, we dream, my boy and me. And I keep my blessings close.
I’ve been feeding the birds in the garden, to my son’s delight. So much so a male blackbird, one of my totems, always a sign of alignment for me, now waits by the kitchen window for me each morning. So much so my son asked for a bird feeder instead of toys in a shop mid-week. He spends his mornings rhyming off the names of the native birds who visit it like an incantation. He sets up “forests” all over the house, hedgehogs and bats, foxes and squirrels, owls, and badgers, wild birds. “I’m a forest protector!” he says puffing out his tiny chest, his eyes shining bright. I hope he will always be this way, even as a grown man. I hold him close.
My mothering heart is shattered, it breaks daily, for mothers and fathers, for children, their eyes forever dulled, half a world away. My human mind cannot comprehend it, still. Almost one hundred days of tears. And yet, I refuse to bend my humanity into a shape in which I could live with this unaffected. I will bear witness. I will hold each life as sacred. I will tell their stories. I will allow my heart to break and break and break, because that’s how the light gets in. I will keep my soul soft with love and community. I will keep my ancestors close at my back. I will wear all their prayers of love and of freedom as a cloak around me. I will weave myself into a community who hold the same values, the same desire for the world; one of peace and freedom. A community which dares to dream outside of the confines of the capitalist, colonial complex. A community who has “gone native”, who is more invested in our ties to the earth and each other than individual profit and ease. I will envisage a different future for this world, I will make it anew, as often as I need to. I have nailed my colours to the mast, and I trust I will find myself surrounded by those whose hearts align with mine. And that blackbird sings through the rooms.
The New Moon came on Thursday, tonight you should see her as a thin sliver in the sky. Turn the coins in your pocket, plant what seeds you need to, kiss the ones you love, may each grow with the moon.
With that moon it is time for Januarys Writing Down the Weeds. This month I’ve chosen Birch to research and write. Beith. The first letter in the Ogham alphabet and the tree Niall Mac Coitir assigns to this time in his Ogham Tree Calendar.
The forest behind the house where we currently live, my childhood home, my childhood woods, is mostly Silver Birch. At this time of year, the bare bones glint like its namesake in the low light. At dusk it seems to glow. The pale, paper like bark catching the last embers of the day. These are the woods I’ve wandered my whole life, the ones I’ve come home to again and again. I’ve grown up with them. I’ve watched more species of tree self-seed amongst the first birch. I’ve watched saplings grow to tower above me. I’ve watched the bog fall out of use for cutting and watched the trees reclaim it, first the bog cotton and then the birch.
These are the woods I took my son to when he was just a few days old, to introduce him to the trees, to the bog, the moss, to the barn owl who used to follow me home, to the magpie who lived a brief while on my desk, to the fox mother who showed me her cubs, to the magic woven there.
What was once just young birch woodland growing on disused parts of the bog, slowly taking over from the heather, bracken at its roots, is now threaded through with holly and hawthorn, willow, rowen, and oak. Wind-blown and bird-fell onto the rich dark soil and rooted down deep. There is, inexplicably, a Scots-pine on the edge of a planted spruce patch just outside the official bounds of the woodland, straight lines so dense that nothing grows under them, and sheep bones lie scattered in the dark. The same farmer, under a grant for such things, planted oak along the edge of the woods and then abandoned them inside their plastic tubing, leaving their growth stunted. One sweltering summer I cut them free, and they have flourished, rewarding the forest with now countless oak saplings self-seeded from acorns tossed in by the south wind. Where I could once kiss their soft, fuzzy, green crowns most of them are now far taller than me, wild woodbine in a heady scented tangle at their roots.
In early spring the whole wood seems to fizz with rising sap. Long before I knew what it was, I could feel the trees fizz under my hands for a few dizzy weeks. Having said nothing about this to my boy he announced last year that he could hear the trees making a sound like water running up them, a whooshing sound which delighted him so.
And so, I know it like the back of my hand and yet I don’t; it is a living, breathing, multi-faceted, moving thing. So much so my boy is convinced trees can walk. Each visit it is new, and each visit it is undeniably old.
A new wood, self-seeded on a working peatbog, which was once, millennia ago, a mighty ancient forest, its bones now discarded in heaps pulled from the turf. Huge pieces of twisted, ancient wood, pale as driftwood, lying on the pitch-black peat amongst the heather. There’s a metaphor in it somewhere, there’s a few. The one I’m interested in today is one of regeneration and rebirth, of how given half a chance nature and what is native will thrive, of how life always finds a way. It is birch, silvered and new.
Below is the folklore and then a very short piece of folklore infused fiction. It leans heavily on Sylvia Plath’s Wintering, the line ‘Winter is for women’ lifted directly from her. It is a tale I feel I’ve told before, perhaps again and again. The Oracle in the woods waiting for spring. It is a dreamtime wander in the winter woods, it is pale and budding, it is a slow waiting, and I trust it is hopeful. It is Birch.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Of Asterisms and Allegory to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.