I love what I do

I love what I do..

…hummed in my head as I gathered linden branches in a honey-sweet cloud of blossom.

Since the solstice, fair-weather days have been filled with harvesting whisk branches, and my evenings have quietly passed binding birch whisks. It makes me smile — I really am my father's daughter. Even as a small child I would try to bind something out of the little offcuts he set aside, and now, years later, he watches football indoors while making birch whisks, and I do the very same thing outside, in the last golden light, laying in a good store of my own for winter.

Alongside birch, this year I also made linden whisks for the first time. I gathered the branches, as one usually does, from small-leaved linden (Tilia cordata) together with the opened blossoms, so that in winter one can be reminded of the sweetness of summer. For me, linden is the tree of unconditional love, and these whisks find their way into slightly more special saunas — where a soft touch is needed, a blessing, a more powerful creation of the new. Perhaps a bridesmaids' sauna, a mothers' sauna, birthday rituals… time will tell.

I'm in a place right now where so many skills I've picked up over the years support what I do. Years of fieldwork help me find good foraging spots, and my time at the Environmental Board and working as a hiking guide taught me to read landscapes. Wading through tall grass in a young stand, the botanist in me steps forward — noticing the downy birches hiding among the silver ones. When cutting, the gardener takes over, trying to take where there is excess, and in a way that keeps the tree visually beautiful and well. It stings a little to see birches, and sometimes even oaks, stripped nearly bare. Taken greedily, carelessly. I try to do it differently — in cooperation with nature.

This year nature feels especially generous. Usually I don't come out of the forest with whisk branches alone. Often I stumble upon a rich patch of deep-red wild strawberries, or curved wild raspberry canes that literally block my path. Sometimes golden chanterelles flash up from the ground.

There's a quiet, warm feeling inside as I realise: yes — I love what I do, and I do what I love.