Tag Archives: Maskwi

Maskwi Natural Area

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With the stroke of a pen in early September, the PEI Minister of Land and Environment, Darlene Compton, signed into law the creation of the Maskwi Natural Area, a 22-acre parcel of forest, small fields and wetlands in my backyard.

My backyard, in fact. 

I only found out that the papers had been signed a couple of weeks ago and wouldn’t really believe it until I finally held them in my hands last week. It is real, and I’m thrilled and relieved.

I started the process to protect this property with the Island Nature Trust in 2021. Due to the pandemic, staff changes, the need for new surveys and deeds, and some back and forth on the language in the agreement, it took five years to make this dream come true. In human time, it seemed long, but in forest time, it is just a second.

Maskwi is Miꞌkmaq for white birch, which grow in abundance in the forest. No Miꞌkmaq name could be found for this area, so as the last traditional harvest on this land was of birch bark, and that had included beautiful offerings of tobacco to the trees, it seemed to be a good name.

The agreement, a restrictive covenant made under the Natural Areas Protection Act (NAPA) between me, the Island Nature Trust and the provincial government, is necessarily strict, though really it changes nothing as I have been treating the land as if it was a protected area for over 15 years. I would imagine the value of the property decreased as soon as the agreement was signed as it can no longer be built upon, subdivided or cleared, but I was never going to sell it for that anyway as it is priceless to me.

The birds and animals have made no agreement with anyone, of course, and can continue to do whatever they want from now until there are no more governments or humans, which will be a blessed day for non-humans. They can build and harvest in any way they like, which they do anyway, so no change for them either.

It struck me today that the NAPA agreement is a promise similar in many respects to traditional wedding vows: I have promised to look after the land, cherish and keep it safe, in good times and bad. Love it, which I do with my whole heart.

Becoming a protector of a natural area is immensely satisfying at a time when the few people who get a disproportionate amount of attention in this world seem bent on the destruction of everything in pursuit of endless growth and riches. It’s only a tiny chunk of the planet, but it feels like a huge victory.

Grief has made writing difficult for me for the past few months. My thoughts blow around in my head and don’t make it easily to my fingers. This second year of living without my mother has been more difficult than the first. I’m only 18 months into this life sentence and still not really used to it. My one constant joy has been moving through the trees, slowly breathing and observing. She loved walking through the woods, too, so I can imagine her with me.

Luckily dear Jane Siberry perfectly said what I can’t in her 1989 song Bound by the Beauty:

I'm coming back in five hundred years
And the first thing I'm gonna do
When I get back here is to see
These things I love
And they better be here, better be here, better be here

And first I'm going to find a forest
And stand there in the trees
And kiss the fragrant forest floor
And lie down in the leaves
And listen to the birds sing
The sweetest sound you'll hear
And everything the dappled
Everything the birds
Everything the earthness
Everything the verdant
The verdant
The verdant
The verdant green.
An orange board with the words white birch, maskwi and bouleau a papier written on them, with dead brown leaves around. The word maskwi is mostly covered with leaves.
In 2017 I asked the birch trees in the forest to tell me what they wanted to be called and they did quite decisively, so maskwi it is.

Birch Sap

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On an early-morning amble through the decommissioned shale pit near our house today, I noticed a cloudly icicle hanging from the cut end of a tree. The maskwi (white birch) had toppled over sometime last year and I cut it in the winter so I could use the path. I didn’t bother severing the trunk from the ground, so it was still alive. The temperatures had fallen to -5C overnight, so the sap that was rising froze as it dripped.

I broke off a piece and popped it in my mouth, and there was the faintest sweetness there. Collect enough and boil it down and a sweet syrup can be created.

I have never seen this before, a sapicle. I’ve seen lots of maskwi stumps, but it must have been the angle that the trunk was leaning that allowed this sweet phenomenon to occur.

Every time I go for a walk in the forest next to our house, I see something new. Every time. You might think that’s an exaggeration, that I can still find something new here after 60 years, but I do, and it still surprises me. Something as simple as some dripping sap can connect me to the gifts of the earth and the power of the sun and the magic of walking slowly and looking with newly-opened morning eyes.

An icicle made of sap hanging from the cut end of a maskwi/white birch tree, with other trees standing behind it.

Post-Fiona Maskwi

Updated my page documenting the healing journey of the maskwi (birch) trees that were first harvested in July 2021 by my friend Kay, an amazing Mi’kmaq porcupine quill artist who uses the bark as the backing for her pieces.

The trees seem to be doing very well, the dark bark starting to peel off on some of the trees revealing a lighter layer underneath.

Dark bark coming off, lighter layer underneath

Storm Fiona was not kind to parts of our woodland, but the trees I have been documenting all survived in the midst of severe damage all around them. Birch are bendy, and they seemed to whip in the wind better than the white spruce that toppled all around them. Before Fiona, the “group photo” had been easily accessible along a trail we have had for decades; this time I had to climb over and under piles of trees to get there, the trail completely buried. The devestation remains breathtaking.

It’s difficult to capture, but this was a stand of towering 60-year-old white spruce, all felled by Fiona.

If you live in Mi’kmaki and are settled on land that has white birch, I hope you will consider allowing a harvest to take place. It is a different aesthetic, to be sure, and some people who see the trees near our house think they have been damaged or vandalized. I have, unfortunately, had some uncomfortable conversations with people about why I would allow the trees to be stripped, how ugly they look now.

I think the trees look beautiful, and the ceremony used to harvest the bark is a lesson to all who take from nature. Offering tobacco and a prayer to the tree is part of the bark harvest, and a relationship is formed between the harvester and the trees. I can’t imagine someone getting ready to mow down a bunch of trees in a huge machine making an offering to the trees they are about to destroy.

Where some see vandalism, I see justice, respect, and 12 millennia of history.

A Flock of Robins

Just now, as I was looking out the living room window trying to decide how to spend this day, a flock of robins bounced down our lane. Two, then three, leapfrogging over each other. Moving from the red dirt road to the green grass, all of it covered with leaves from the white birch, the maskwi.

I counted seven in all, running and hopping, turning over leaves that were nearly the same colour as their beautiful rusty breasts. They were finding little earthworms and the ancient sowbugs, tiny crustaceans that walk on earth.

As the last robin hopped out of my view, I was still undecided as to what I should do with the rest of this day, still fresh and new, but my robin friends certainly reminded me to walk lightly on the earth and appreciate whatever I find. The sun is finally up and the maskwi are glowing in its light.

Maskwi

I’ve added a page to my site to track the regeneration of birch bark trees that were first harvested in July 2021. I’m told it will take about five years for the white bark to remerge, so I intend to photograph the trees every six months to document that process.

It’s been interesting to watch the bark change from a light soft leathery feel to dark and hard. The trees did not bleed and I didn’t notice any difference in the leaf drop in autumn. While the trees probably wonder where the bark went, they seem to be just getting to work and growing more bark!

I believe some of the harvested bark is included in quillwork pieces that are part of the exhibit called Matues Revisited that is on until March 13, 2022 at the Mary E. Black Gallery in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia. I told the trees this news, and they nodded and swayed in appreciation.