In contrast, the dugout is more enduring, with examples dating back millennia, perhaps because of the boat’s unibody construction, perhaps because the use of fire chars the surface and slows the appetite of the wood-rotting microbes, and perhaps because a dugout can sink into water or mud. As it turns out, one of the oldest museum-piece birchbarks in existence dates from the mid 1700’s, a mere 270 years old. Of the two types, I am guessing that birchbark canoes have shorter half-lives, that if stored outdoors they fall away to fluff in a matter of a few seasons, that the high surface-area of exposed wood gives fungi rampant opportunities for fine dining. Or, at least the ones that have survived tend to be. The dugout is about taking away, not about putting together, and the vessel is solid, durable, of a single piece, heavy, and rugged. I can imagine how this craft could be crafted from a single tree, a straight trunk, a solid bole, with a combination of a flinty adze, a sinewy arm, and a glowing brand. On the other hand, there’s another flavor of canoe, the dugout, and its construction seems as straightforward as its name. I have no more idea of how people originally figured out how to make them than I know where Stuart Little paddled away in ‘Summer Memories.’ These are fragile boats, and delicate, too, made of phellem and wood sewn and steamed and glued together with ribs, thwarts, gunwales. Among vessels built for carrying, the canoe comes first to my mind, and the foremost kind of Northwoods canoe to me is the birchbark canoe, the nimble craft with twin curved & upturned bow and stern. “Carrying” becomes a coin with two sides: what our boats can carry, and whether we can carry our boats. These waterways are also roadways, too, and their portages–the carrying places between navigable waters–are literally in our Constitution. Our predecessors and we steer our boats on streams and across inland seas that serve as liquid highways that lead us to the Atlantic Ocean, to the Gulf of Mexico, even to Hudson Bay & beyond.įor generations many of our homes and communities have clung close to our interior rivers and lakes and flowages, flush with their fish and fowl, their fur-bearers and wild rice beds. These waters are not just boundaries they are arteries. Room 1111 Genetics Biotech Center, 425 Henry Mall, Madison WI,Īs our state flag reminds us, we are a maritime people of a land bounded by the Great River and by two Great Lakes. “Wednesday Nite The Lab” Public Science Talks
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