When I was six years old I went to Finland for nearly three months with my Mum and Dad. They wrote a note to school to say I would be finishing that summer term early, and late back for the next school year. My Dad was a master of school notes - they were short, pithy and not deferential. He has wonderful, emphatic handwriting - I've never seen another script even vaguely similar - the 'R's are always capitals....start of a sentence, beginning of a word, even mid-word. But then he is an artist. One time he wanted to take me to see a film that was on in the afternoon, so he wrote a succinct note to say that I had a dentist appointment. It would have read something like..."Dear Mrs Bird (she did look a bit like a bird), Tashi has a dentist appointment on Thursday afternoon so will leave school at lunchtime. Yours sincerely, J Trigg." My favourites were his responses to my school reports. A little slip on the last page was to be returned to school, signed, and with any comments your parents might wish to make. He once wrote "Brilliant Tashi!"...that was it. They probably thought that I had written it.
The connection to Finland goes back to my Dad having travelled and worked there as a young man in the mid 1960's, designing prototype birch plywood houses. He had maintained contact with friends there, Pekka Ojamaa and his family, and a trip was planned for the Summer of 1973. We travelled by a combination of ferries, trains and coaches, and by small boats on the lakes that are scattered throughout the country. Finland has around 188,000 lakes! I have memories of waiting by the roadside for buses that arrived, eventually, despite us being in the middle of nowhere and with no indication that we should expect any form of public transport. Our unusual assortment of luggage would be gathered around our feet and my Dad would often have some humorous drawings on the go, or be taking photographs with his 35mm Pentax. There must have been some sort of itinerary, but being six years old I was living in the moment the way that only young children can. I recall feelings of freedom, adventure and happiness.
Picking blueberries at the summer house (near Jyvaskyla) with Mum and Pia. Pia was blind but collected the most berries. I ate a lot of mine!
Nature was taking back the summer house, slowly but surely. It was magical.
The photo below is my Mum and I walking through a silver birch forest on that Finnish trip. It is a precious image to me - a moment in time that I hold in my memory with clarity. I know the smells of that forest, the soft moss underfoot, the endless, quiet space. We walked for miles (I wasn't a whinger, apparently) and I think those days had a lasting effect on my relationship with trees and nature. I cherish the unique experience of that long Summer......and I can also count to 10 in Finnish.
The Silver birch (Betula pendula) is the national tree of Finland, a country that has 74% forest cover (we have around 13% in the UK). It is a slender, pale beauty with fine, drooping branches and small serrated leaves that quiver in the breeze. They are monoecious, meaning both female and male catkins are produced on the same tree, from April to May. It is a light demanding, pioneer species - one of the first plants to become established on bare ground or cleared forest sites, where soil conditions are suitable. Silver birch, and its relation Downy birch, are a significant part of the Finnish timber economy, which itself contributes 4% to Finland's GDP. They are grown in plantation forests, often alongside conifer species, and harvested for timber and other wood products on a cyclical basis - rotations are about 40-60 years. This is a highly productive, well oiled business that uses state-of-the-art machinery to manage and fell large areas of forest. This is how commercial forestry works, and in Finland 14% of the 5.5 million population are forest owners, and 60,000 people are directly employed in the sector. At any given time there are forests of various ages, from seedlings that have just been planted (or regenerated naturally) to those that are ready for harvesting.
I think that many people are understandably ignorant of how we manage trees as a crop. There is a mismatch between peoples perceptions of the natural and appealing qualities of wood, and how that material is supplied, in vast quantities, to feed our demand for products. It may sound glib, but if you want things made from timber you have to chop down trees. For that to be economically viable it tends to happen en masse - clear fell cutting - and it can be difficult to reconcile the ugliness of a freshly emptied forest with your desire for a new shelving unit from Ikea. I am not talking about illegal or unsustainable logging, but commercial forestry that supplies us all with a renewable resource that, when properly managed, is sustainable and provides a means of sequestering carbon for long periods. The last twenty years have seen a movement, within forestry, towards low impact silviculture. In plantation woodlands, rather than clear felling large areas of homogenous trees, a more varied age structure is developed to create a continuous canopy. However, harvesting such stands (groups of trees in a forest) is logistically more complex and so economically less attractive. It is unlikely that the use of clear fell will be replaced whilst the business model is so successful, and certainly not in Finland and the other widely forested northern European countries. There may be other reasons to alter our behaviour, not least the need to protect forests from the growing threat of pests and diseases, and to address the challenges of climate change - but that is another story.
During our trip my Dad started carving a long, straight silver birch branch, taller than him and about 6cm in diameter. He worked on it throughout our travels, cutting swirling curves into the creamy white wood, creating a totem pole of sorts. When it was time to head home he did not want to leave it behind, but it was far too unwieldly for public transport. He bravely sawed it in half and strapped the two pieces to the side of one our army surplus holdalls. Back home he made it whole again, hiding the join with some neatly wound rope and glue. For years it stood in a corner of his studio, as an evocative reminder of our wonderful family adventure. I have not seen it since I was a child and fear it may be long gone, but I must ask him if it is still gathering dust somewhere.
On the ferry with my beautiful Mum.
Tea on the veranda of the summer house. Pia and Pekka were rarely without a cigarette.
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