January 11

Down the access road from our house, just after it takes a bend toward Asnebumskit Pond, there is a cluster of white birch trees set back roughly fifty feet into the woods. It is a grouping of six trees, with their individual trunks meeting commonly at the base and each trunk going off in its own direction. I’ve noticed that many birches form this arrangement, possibly having started as shoots from a mature three that felled long ago.

They are beautiful in winter, especially when the diffuse light of a gentle snow or even winter fog darkens the background just enough to contrast their whitened bark.

There really aren’t that many birch trees around here, at least there aren’t as many as I’m told existed in this area years ago. Ecologists claim that the birch prefers a colder and somewhat moister climate, and the global warming patterns of the past 20 years have shifted the growing niche of birch trees northward. It’s too bad, for I enjoy seeing them in any season.

When I was young, spending summers in Northern Michigan, we used to make crafts out of the birch bark. Native Americans have long made use of birch trees, from using the bark as a covering for canoes, as a water container, and even as a food substitute. The Ottawa and Ojibwa tribes still carry on a decorative art of making small boxes out of birch bark, festooned with animal and flower designs on the surface made out of porcupine quills. My mother used to purchase these and keep them in our cottage, and I liked to open the boxes to smell them, for the Ojibwa would line the edges with dried sweet grass. It would smell like perfumed summer sunshine, and the smell lasts for years.

We would find a suitable white or even paper birch, one with a large trunk and pristine bark. Then we’d take a pocket knife and cut just a few layers into the bark, making a large square cut on the trunk about the size of a sheet of paper. We’d carefully take the edge of the knife to lift one of the corners away from the tree and slowly peel out the entire square whole.

It had the feel of thick cardstock. The inner side would be beautifully tinted in light and darker brown, matching the white and black patterns on the outside. On this inner side, we’d write poems or sayings or draw pictures. Then we’d light a match and slowly burn the edges of the square to give a burnished look.