Listen as Scott chats with North Shore Radio host, Mark Abrahamson, about the many uses of birch wood, as well as the sustainable and ethical use of natural materials.
Pack & Paddle: The Many Uses of Birch Wood
0:00:00.2 Mark: WTIP's feature, Pack & Paddle, with Scott Oeth is up next. Scott is a registered Maine Guide, an Eagle Scout, and Minnesota Master Naturalist. He's an instructor for the Okpik National Cold Weather Leader School. He joins us now by phone. Welcome, Scott.
0:00:15.0 Scott Oeth: Hey, good morning, Mark.
0:00:16.5 Mark: Alright, we have a different subject today. How come you wanted to talk about birch trees this morning?
0:00:22.4 SO: Well, I've always loved the birch. To me, it's just an icon of the Northwoods, a beautiful tree, and I knew it had a lot of uses in terms of humans and their interaction with the landscape, historically, and also in modern times, and recently I've been... Well, my little boy and I were out on a hike in the woods, and we came across an area that had been cut over, some private property where a bunch of... There's a huge brush pile and there's a big dead, downed birch tree that had recently been cut, and I said, "Hey, this could be kind of fun. Let's collect some bark because I know there's a bunch of projects." So we did that and that kind of led into me diving into this a little bit deeper and, boy, as I just keep peeling back the layers, it's absolutely incredible, the history of birch and humans and the multitude of uses that it's been applied for.
0:01:09.8 Mark: Tell us some things you've learned.
0:01:11.9 SO: Yeah, well, obviously we have... There's something like... There's several dozen varieties of birches, and it seems like the experts don't agree, but it sounds like 45 or so different varieties, of which we have about five in Minnesota. And the history of humans and birches, like I say, it's just incredible. Food, shelter, clothing, and more, but the bark itself has obviously been used for shelters, the slabs would be used for roofing in Scandinavia, and there's a lot of history of birch use in Eastern Europe and Russia. Wigwams in our area, the bent saplings with bark coverings, and of course the wood inside the structures. Birches have been actually used in clothing, the famous Birkebeinars from Norway, the birch leggings for waterproof clothing. And there's an oil that can be extracted from birch that I guess is very valuable in tanning hides, and it was integral in the process for making what's called Russian leather, which is a very highly prized waterproof leather. You can also get a tar or a pitch from the birch bark that's great for a bonding agent and waterproofing, and actually had some medicinal uses for aching joints and could be used in torches. Just really, really incredible.
0:02:24.3 SO: And then we have of course the whole myriad of bowls and containers and baskets made from the bark, both the outer papery bark and the inner more thick splints that would be carved up and woven. Even shoes. I didn't mention that. I've seen shoes and hats woven out of inner birch bark. And then, Mark, you just mentioned to me that you have a medical background. It appears the birch tree is an entire medicine cabinet in and of itself, according to various folk medicine histories, but all different types of stuff from teas, the inner bark being chewed up, pieces of the roots, the various fungus that grow on it. Chaga gets a lot of discussion recently. So I'm not going to necessarily prescribe or recommend any of these things, but it's very interesting to see the many, many things that it's been ascribed to helping. Soap is one. Actually there's sap in the leaves that you can chop up and use soap. And then food. I mentioned the leaves. You can make tea out of it. Apparently you can scrape away and get down to the inner bark, and you can scrape that down and make a starchy, floury substance out of that. And people are tapping birch for the birch water, where you can actually distill that down and make syrup, like maple syrup.
0:03:43.9 SO: And I think of course, one of the ones closest to my heart is the birchbark canoe. So in our region, the incredible history of this beautiful craft that allowed people to travel across our country, the natives, and the explorers and missionaries, and the fur trade, of course. So it's a really remarkable tree and as I was reading up on this, I saw some really interesting names come up in terms of their relation to birch. I guess, Queen Elizabeth was using a lot of birch water when she was a young woman on her hair to apparently try and thicken her hair, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn... I'm probably mispronouncing his name, Nobel Prize winner who was in the Gulag... Was desperate for chaga that grows on birch as a cancer treatment. I guess, it's widely used in Russia. And then obviously the Iceman. He had a birchbark basket that he was carrying with him. His ax head was attached with birch tar. He had some birch-related medicine for some ailments that he had that they found on, and a substance called amadou, which is derived from a fungus that grows specifically on the birch, that's good for carrying sparks. You can use flint and steel to make fire with this amadou tinder. So a really incredible history of birch and people.
0:05:00.2 Mark: Well, Scott, what are some of the sustainable and ethical uses people can use birch for in the outdoors right now?
0:05:07.2 SO: I love the way you framed that question, Mark. I actually had written on my notes here, "ethical harvest" as a point to talk about. And I've seen time and time again, I came across many camp sites this summer myself that were just junked up. I was in the middle of the UP in a wilderness area and I couldn't believe it. There's packets of Ramen noodles and beer cans in the fire pit, and so I think two things. Study leave no trace principles. Just generally, seek to leave areas better than you found them. Think about actual ecological impacts, but also the impact for the shared visitors coming after you in this area. Our public lands, we share them together, and I get the impression that some folks maybe if they're newer to the outdoors think there's housekeeping or something, and just put your trash in the fire pit, room service will be along in the morning to pick it up.
0:05:57.9 SO: But ethical harvest. So something like peeling off bark for tinder to light your fire... Well, as long as you're not going into the deeper layers, it doesn't necessarily harm the tree, but if you're doing that around heavily used camp sites, it can denude the trees and takes away the look, and so we don't recommend it. So basically, anything that's a park, a state park, a national park, you probably don't wanna touch anything. These are high use areas, there's a lot of impact, you wanna be very light on the land. Private property is an obvious location. Like I mentioned, my boy and I coming across a brush pile that was private property, that had been cut, and we were very happy to find some birch there that we could use and work with. If you can find timber company land or forest area that is being cut by timber companies, I think that's probably a very likely possibility. A lot of it's being cut as pulp wood at this point, and you can actually get logging or harvest permits, and so I think those are probably your main areas.
0:06:58.6 Mark: Say, Scott tell us a couple of the uses that your son and you made of that birch that you got.
0:07:05.4 SO: Yeah, well, I've definitely used birch a lot in fire making, and I'll come back to that, but what I was specifically interested in was using some of the bark, and kind of a classic, you can make a little dipper or ladle, and to get the bark off the tree, it's on there really tightly, especially... It depends on the time of year, but this tree was already down, and so the process, you need a good knife. Be very careful on your follow-through, make sure the blade isn't gonna close on your hand, or that as it comes off the log, it's not gonna slip into your thigh, but you score a section that you wanna remove, and it helped with us, we took another stick that's like a mallet and tapped the bark and that helps release it. You can also hot water on there, but you can take off a round section and you make a fold in it and put a stick on it, and you can make sort of a dipper ladle type thing, and that's a neat little project that's fun to make.
0:07:54.2 SO: Another really good one is you can fold it up into a dog dish, sort of a rectangular type shallow bowl, and this is kind of a classic birchbark project, and with that, I think to extend it even further, in survival classes and things, it's a very useful handicraft to make that, and that's a way that you can actually boil water, if you don't have a metal pot. You could heat rocks in a fire and then put them in that shallow bowl and keep replacing the bark. But the wood itself is excellent for carving. Spoon carving's become a popular hobby in a lot of Scandinavian heritage. There's some edibles, as I mentioned, if you can find a place where you can ethically and responsibly harvest it, the birch water has a very mild sweetness to it, and of course, tapping for sap and you make a tea from the leaves. And there's a couple, as I mentioned, specific fungus. Some folks are very interested in chaga, which is again purported to have many, many medicinal properties. There's a birch poly pour that you can make this amadou substance for curing sparks, and some of the fungus is good for actually using as a strop on your knife.
0:09:00.9 SO: So many, many things. Of course, the bark is water resistant, it has a lot of oil in it, it's exceptional tinder. I just mentioned, I've seen this in many trips, people come back from the woods dragging in a birch log that they found on the ground, and when birch falls, because that bark is so water-tight and water resistance, the wood on the ground actually starts rotting within the bark, so birch can be an excellent firewood... It's one of the hottest burning in the Northwoods, puts out more heat and a cleaner, brighter heat than say pine or spruce or fir... But to burn properly, it really needs to be split so that it dries out and seasons. It can be burnt green, but you kind of need to put in a very fine split, and I'd just stack it up near a fire to pre-dry it out, warm it up.
0:09:47.8 Mark: We love to have that mix of birch and other woods up here for our fireplaces, too, Scott. So where can we find out more. Do you have a specific site that you can learn more about birch?
0:10:02.4 SO: Yeah, a couple of things. There's a woman named Anna Lewington who wrote a book just called Birch, and she has a podcast with a fellow named Paul Kirtley, who's out of the UK. He puts out fantastic material. I found that podcast episode alone very, very interesting. She touches on a wealth of things in there, and then her book. North House Folk School in Grand Marais put out a book called Celebrating Birch. And here in Minnesota, Minnesota DNR and the University of Minnesota Extension, both have really good websites where you can read about birch, specifically the varieties in Minnesota, some of the issues they've had with diseases and things along those lines, and I try and write about the outdoor skill side of things and how it relates to humans on Bull Moose Patrol.
0:10:48.3 Mark: We are talking with Scott Oeth. You can follow his adventures at www.bullmoosepatrol.com. Scott, this has been a great conversation this morning. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
0:11:00.3 SO: I'd say get outside and enjoy the fresh air and see if you can spot some of those beautiful birch trees.
0:11:05.5 Mark: Thank you so much for joining us.
0:11:07.8 SO: Thanks, Mark.