A DAY IN BIELOWIECZ.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18959, 4 January 1930, Page 14

A DAY IN BIELOWIECZ.

(By

E. M. ALMEDINGEN.)

Bielowiecz! Once the home of the “zouber," fiercer, rarer and bigger than any bi.anl Bielowiecz, the imperial hunting enclosure, with its graceful jewel of a hunting box, its carillon of silver trumpets, its army of stalwart green-clad keepers, their faces mostly scarred, for the “zouber” rarely had an amiable disposition. .... But Bielowiecz is more than this. It is a forest of white and silver glories, as its name denotes, for there the silver birch has come into its own as in no other place in the world. When you go to spend a day in Bielowiecz, you don’t think of the vanished hunting grandeur at all. You go to spend a few hours among the silver birches —and the time is not spent in vain. There is a long, broad avenue leading up to the official enclosure, and the sand beneath the wheels of the carriage gleams green and silver under the delicate leafage of the trees. When you throw your head back, you imagine you are being driven down the nave of a gigantic cathedral with silver and green inlay on its ceiling. There is a wall running round a part of Bielowiecz—a friendly white stone wall —but you don’t want to concern yourself with walls and houses on such a day. You leave it behind you and plunge right into the silvery thickness of forest until no sound is heard except your own steps and the bird lilts in the tall swaying branches. You go on, secretly wishing that the vanished "zouber’* might thrust his dark, shaggy mane in between the silvery trunks. In Bielowiecz the queenly trees stand two and two together, so jealously close that a rabbit would find it difficult to squeeze through. “Two faithful lovers never apart”—say the wise folk round about Bielowiecz, and you sense the truth of that old legend. So much love lies about Bielowiecz—quiet soothing love, the kind that does not hurt, but heals instead.

Silvery and regal close the trees around you. If you listen well, you can hear a love-song in the rustling of their branches-. For you know that all trees have something more in them than just root, trunk, branch and leaf; and a silver birch has love, delicate as the colour of its leaves, strong as its proudly unbent trunk. But you have wandered far enough, and there is a whistle somewhere behind you. You pretend it is an Imperial trumpet summoning you to the Presence behind the white walls, and you go back, but not before you have pressed your cheek against the cool, soft silver bark of a birch tree.