My First Birching in the Woods
Late August we went to spend some weeks in the Alps with all the family. The panorama was idyllic: rocky mountains, luxuriant woods, meadows and pastures studded by crystal lakes. We walked many hours every day and enjoyed ourselves a lot.
One morning our kids remained to play with some friends in a beautiful park, full of games and attractions, so Alex and I went for a walk in a wood quite far away. The previous day and night I had been in charge, and Alex was wearing marks of my belt and teeth. Besides, he had his legs striped with red and blue bruises, because I had beaten him with tiny branchlets. He was very proud of those marks and ready to switch. He informed me with a steel voice: “Today I AM in charge, sweetie.”
For half an hour we followed a beaten path, then decided to enter into the thick of the forest. We went on for some minutes: at a certain point it was as if we were passing the threshold of an enchanted realm, and time was no more. The ground was crowded with fallen branches, rocks covered with musk, stones of different shapes and dimensions, tall grasses. A beautiful raven, black as the deepest night, was following us from the beginning of the morning and stopped himself to rest on the tallest branch of a tree nearby. Squirrels were playing. There was an exquisite fragrance of wet earth and mint plants. For a long time we remained silent.
At last my Master told me: “I think that this is the right place. The trees are dense enough, and there’s a good supply of the kind of wood I was looking for”. The wood around us was a mixed forest, partly made of conifers and partly of oaks and [tag]birches[/tag]. I was dressed in a wool sweater, a pair of orange shorts, and heavy shoes. At my neck I wore a silver collar with very big turquoises. In my earlobes there were eight small golden earrings and two large ones of silver and turquoise. They were so heavy that were slowly stretching my holes. Over his jeans Alex wore a very big belt, with an heavy engraved buckle. (click to read entire story…)