Thursday 16 December 2010

Winter Birch


On the days that the clouds move in and the sun remains hidden, it seems to be a monochromatic world out there. The evergreens look more black than green. Shades of gray abound. It gives me a bit of an idea of what it must feel like to be colorblind. But if this current color scheme means snow is in the air, I'm okay with that. We did get a few flurries today, though they were very sparse. Still, each flake adds up. I was again helping Greg, and he had me pulling nails from some boards. As I did, I could see little snowflakes on the wood. One had all six points and actually looked three-dimensional. Amazing little delights.

It's been a little over a month now that we have had decent measurable snow. In looking through my photos, I came across a couple that were taken on November 14th. It was our first big snowfall, and though we tried, the roads were not in decent condition for us to make it in to church. We came home, and decided that a walk in the woods was in order. So we headed up the Loon Lake Road, and then took the Border Route Trail spur that led back to the South Rim Trail. Since it had been cleared in October, we knew that it would be in good shape.

The hiking required close attention to our feet, but it still didn't stop us from taking in the beautiful scenery around us. The trees were heavily laden, thanks to the wet snow. As we went along, we noticed several birch trees that still had many little twigs and branches on them. This was noteworthy because, ever since the blowdown, we have seen a huge decline in the numbers of healthy birch trees. One school of thought is that the lack of shade (from all those trees that went down) caused the ground to receive more sunshine. That in turn warmed the soil more than the birch were accustomed to, and thus, they were tending to die off. To see healthy ones in this patch of woods was certainly good news.

One in particular caught our eyes. Greg identified it as a yellow birch. Most of what we have here are white, or paper birch. The yellow birch seem to grow larger, and the bark on them is much rougher. The one that we found most fascinating had twisted bark. It rather reminded me of a cedar tree.
I think that I will have to make a trek back up to that trail in the spring, so that I can see how this tree is doing in a new season. It will definitely be easy to spot.

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