A journey through Corsican forests

For several post-Covid months, I’ve found it hard to follow my 9 pm-to-3 am slumber habit due to racking breathlessness. There’s an upside though: once awake, I surf the Net before reverting to a fitful sleep. With news channels often providing disingenuous entertainment dressed as news, I often drift to foreign channels.

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Recently, I surfed an early morning enchanting film shot inside the 10,000-year-old hilly Corsican forests. It had a strappy, pleasant middle-aged ‘tree-surgeon’ (arborist) navigating us through chestnut-olive-cork-maquis forests, with interlocutors explaining its fascinating aspects with panache.

Corsica, an Italian Mediterranean island-republic till 1768, was ceded to France as war indemnity, and is located 170 km off mainland France. The island with 200-odd beaches once had tony watering holes like the Côte d’Azur (French Riviera).

Tree-surgeons professionally focus on the health and safety of individual plants/trees rather than managing forests. They tend to specialise in one or more disciplines such as diseases, pests, uses, care, risk assessment, cultural practices and represent a coveted, well-paid emerging specialisation.

Our cheery tree-surgeon started off with chestnut (Shahbalut); attractive full-canopy trees common in Mediterranean climates. Chestnuts are rich in carbohydrates, have little fat, are the only nuts containing Vitamin C and are used as bread/cereal substitutes.

The scientist next shimmied up an unusually tall olive tree with his interlocutor. The otherwise short, gnarled, evergreen olive (Jaitun) tree has, over the 7,000 years of its cultivation, been part of the renowned Mediterranean trinity of bread-pasta-olive cuisine. Olive trees, we were informed, are harvested for oil, finely-veined costly hardwood, leaves and ornamentation.

Next was the cork oak (Kaag/Akashnee) tree; a scented evergreen globally cultivated tree with a prehistorically wide range, supporting diverse endangered species. Used as bottle-stoppers for wine/champagne and as cricket ball cores, cork trees have insulating bark that withstands forest fires, allowing post-fire re-sprouting and quick regeneration.

Fascinated, I watched as our scientist engaged in exploring forest bee-keeping basics with a lady entrepreneur. She explained how she conducts her apiary operations; how the queen bees mate with drone honey bees, and how, after the queen lays eggs, sterile female worker bees ceaselessly create honey-laden hives.

Unexpected learning came from a forest donkey owner. The maquis is near the impenetrable Corsican undergrowth through which donkeys navigate best. Obstinate but with intuitive wisdom, donkeys create paths not vertically, but along contours, with their ear positioning indicating their on-the-job moods.

The documentary ended with the scientist, left alone, confessing that in unravelling the forests, he’d ended up discovering things about himself. I realised I’d been on a journey too…