[011] The Basket Within

I'm teaching a class on Old World Games like Hnefatafl and Nine Man's Morris on the north shore of Lake Superior in late November. Sign up here if you're interested ! I'm also teaching a kid's course on Nine Man's Morris , and a kid's course on making sewing kits .

"Plants seem like the right place to land my weary, apocalyptic attention." - Zoë Schlanger, The Light Eaters

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For the past two days, I've been in class at North House Folk School , learning birch bark basketry with Beth Homa-Kraus. She is known to many as Birch Bark Beth .

Birch bark can be harvested without injuring the tree, if you harvest with care. The layers of bark can be peeled apart until you have a stack of paper-thin sheets, or the bark can be kept thick and strong to use for sturdier projects. As you can see, the bark makes a wonderful sheath. All four of these sheaths are displaying the stunning golden inner layer of birch bark, which is the most recent layer of growth. Inside every birch is a golden ring! Bet you didn't know that.

Glasses can also be constructed from birch bark, here modeled by the author (yours truly). Birch bark doesn't stretch, doesn't compress, and creases firmly in the same way a thick piece of paper does. It is water-resistant and rot-resistant. A well-made birch bark basket will outlive us all.

I borrowed Beth's book on flax-craft during these past few days. Flax leaves, so I learned, can be used in a very similar way to birch bark strips. Thus: the glasses.

Birch is a complicated tree. Birch groves expand rhizomatically, like willows and strawberries. Long tentacles of root will sprout up new birch trees as they crawl through the boreal soil. A whole birch forest might have grown from a single seed.

Wherever birches grow, they are essential to the local culture. Peoples all over northern Europe, Asia, and America have been using birch bark since the beginning of time. People use birch bark to make shoes, hats, milk buckets, fire containers, cooking pots, entire houses, canoes, sugar cones, roofing shingles, and even to do their homework.

This is the writing of a 7-year-old boy named Onfim, who lived in Novgorod, Russia, about 700 years ago. On scraps of birch bark, Onfim practiced his letters, drew pictures of his friends, and wrote "I AM A BEAST". Kids are always kids, no matter where you go.

It is important, when harvesting birch bark, to leave something behind as an offering. This is true of all harvesting and foraging, but especially birch. Many peoples have called it the mother tree, and like a mother, you wouldn't want to take her generosity for granted. If you don't leave something in return for what you're taking, the little people might take something of yours to balance the score.

It is a pure delight to cut birch bark into strips. It is thick, like cardstock, but creamy and soft, like a nice cheddar cheese or a soft wax. The golden inner layer is slightly rough to the touch, like the hand of an old carpenter. The outer layers are more papery and are very effective surfaces for writing love notes.

We used a mixture of walnut oil and beeswax to moisturize the bark before weaving. It's not too bad for the hands, either.

There is a surprising amount of math to birch bark basketry. Weaving "on the diagonal," as most of us did, you must first weave a square base. This might be a 4x4 square, or 8x8, or 11x11. Then, turning up the edges, you find what Beth calls the basket within.

If you want to find your own basket within, take a class with Beth . She is one of the greatest teachers I've ever known, and that's a fact.

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"My pagan head shall sink into the winterland, and there be purified." - J.A. Baker, The Peregrine