Basket 5: Brown Ash (part 2)

Cross-posted at The Wildwood Path

The night before the harvest, I went out to the woods to talk to the trees (I'm one of those people, now). I visited each tree that I had flagged, around ten of them by this point, and I leaned against them and told them about our intentions. I asked whether they would like to join the long tradition of human/ash relationship, giving their lives in return for being remembered in our songs, our photos, and our baskets. I offered them water, and asked them to think about it.

Asking for permission before harvesting is still something I'm wrapping my head around. For some plants, it definitely feels necessary. A tree? Yes. A rare wild herb, yes. A potato, parsley, tomato? I'm not sure. I still have a lot to think about. Even when it feels right to ask permission, I'm still not confident that I'm doing it right. I worry that I'll "hear" the answer that would be most convenient for me. Nikos suggests that one way of asking is to flip a coin, although money carries its own values. In the case of the ash harvest, though, we didn't resort to flipping coins. The queen tree, the one I had dreamed about, gave us gracious acquiescence. A smaller neighbor gave a cheerful "pick me!" And our third tree felt nervous but quietly proud to be chosen.

The first axe-blow was shocking in its decisiveness. No turning back now.

Pale sapwood, darker heartwood. I counted about 40 rings. I'm curious whether the number of sapwood rings is consistent from tree to tree within a species. I don't have an answer yet, but of the three brown ash that we harvested, each had 7-8 rings of sapwood.

Before the trees were even down, we could see that the growth rings were thick and healthy, and eager to separate at the spring growth.

Every part of this process seems to be hard on the hands and wrists. We started the afternoon as a group of five, and were joined by others as the day went on. It's good to have skilled and energetic friends to share the work.

It worked! It really worked. Peeling off those first strips was incredibly satisfying. And sobering. There's a lot of pounding before the first strips come off, and I could hardly make a fist at the end of the day.

As supper time approached, we collected the tools and carried all but one of the logs out of the woods. They are destined to be pounded and remembered as baskets made by children at Village Day. The base of the queen tree stayed where she fell in the woods, for me to visit and pound in the coming weeks.

Three years of growth... many more to go.