White Birch

This is a photo of me getting ready for a big hug with the birch tree.

I love birch trees. They remind me of the moments I spent exploring through crunchy leaves in the northern forest backyards of my youth. The big birch trees partnered with the thin red copper gloss stick shrubs, (probably Betula nana, the "Dwarf Birch.")

The villages of trees prepared themselves for winter.

There was a smell. It was musty but sweet. The birch trees had these little stacks of seeds that crumbled so gently between curious fingertips.

Knowledge is gained; the realization of one, dissolving into many and gliding away so silky and light. What holds us together? Some sort of combination of rain, sun, dirt, wind, and maybe oil or some magnetic force. And what shakes us apart?

Natives of the Northeastern Forests used these trees for making canoes, shingling their roofs and making containers to store food and medicine.

Birch bark is thin and papery. The “Paper Birch” has special resinous oils which preserve the bark, near indefinitely.

Birch trees come in Red, White, Black, Silver and Yellow. Collect them in all sizes. The leaves between the different colors are similar with double serrated edges and feather-veins.

Birch trees tend to prefer a northern temperate climate. I ask the birch, “What is it about this place that makes you stay?” I admit, summer time in a birch grove is heavenly, “But dear bitch tree, how do you make it through a northern winter?”

The Layers Show
TOO MANY! Is it spring yet?!