I have a childhood memory of a birch forest in early spring. . . we were driving out to the peninsula (near lake Huron) where my dad went to summer camp. The trees–smaller birches mostly–had trunks that were the most striking ghostly white color. In my memory, their newly unfurled leaves were a just awakened yellow-green and almost translucent, the way an infant’s skin is often so delicately lit with light. Imagine with me, if you will, the dark forest floor. A gray sky clinging to a horizon. The white trees reaching up and up. The leaves, hungry for light, for winds, for summer-blue sky.
This image (found online) is similar to my memory–bands of white and black on the trunks, the just opened leaves. . . the understory lush at dark root-feet.
In the region where I currently live, the usual thin- or paper-barked birch are not common, but we do have river birch along the region’s waterways and creeks. I love these river-loving trees for their quirky and shaggy bark, and the way they often lean over the water, providing shade along the river’s edge. Their roots–much like beech trees–crawl along the surface of the river’s stony bank, a tangle of connection, insistence, and persistence. These trees often survive the early spring flooding because they have stretched out, found purchase in the stone crevices, and hold on while the water sweeps away the debris that has gathered at their feet in between floods.
In this action, I hear echoes in what Danu Forest writes of this tree: “[T]he birch has immense vitality that is a powerful initiator for change. It is unstoppable in its gradual forward movement; it pushes stagnant energy away, disintegrating it within its path” (Celtic Tree Magic 46).
Penny Billington equates the Birch with “anticipation.” (Also, “fertility” and Bealtanne–a common correspondence in most author’s accounts of Birch/Beith.) Erynn Rowan Laurie offers the encompassing meaning of Beith’s “purification,” and notes that “Beith’s appearance may indicate a need to purify yourself or your intentions before beginning a new project or phase in your life and work. It can be a hint that clarity and discipline are required, and that caution and preparation are necessary as you make your plans” (Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom, 63).
In Scottish Gaelic, birch is “beith,” just as it is in the Ogham and Irish. A lesser used SG word for “birch” is fothadh.
The river birch (from along the Potomac) will be a lovely addition to the set of Ogham I am building. I’ll plan a trip in the next week for a few moments of meditation and offerings to the tree that gives me permission to take a twig for a stave.
Tree of Many Feathers: 