A slab of bark from a recently-harvested black ash tree covered one of the big picnic tables at Atkins Field in Hardwick in late September, where a basketmaking workshop was unfolding. Emerald ash borer larvae – which look like tiny worm-like creatures, pale white in color with a dark dot for a face – dotted the characteristic swooping S-curve tunnels that scarred the bark.
Those S-curve galleries are a death sentence for many ash trees, but especially black ash trees, a wet soil-loving species that researchers say mount little to no resistance to the threat of the emerald ash borer.
The black ash tree was harvested to support a splint-making workshop series, where participants helped produce splints, which are strips of wood peeled from a black ash log. The workshop was funded primarily through the U.S. Forest Service. It was hosted by the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation and by Kerry and Aaron Wood, who are enrolled citizens of the state-recognized Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation.
Kerry Wood said it’s important to think of trees – and the water and the air, among other parts of nature – not as things, but as “someones,” as a brother or sister.
“If we think about the earth as being someone, we might treat them differently than we’re at in this day and age,” she said.
The workshop series allows the public to help create splints that can be stored and potentially used for basketmaking for hundreds of years. The most recent workshop, which took place at Orchard Valley Waldorf School in East Montpelier on Oct. 17, was the final one planned for the year, but the organizers expect the workshops will continue. They hosted five workshops this year, including in Rutland and Chittenden counties.
Basketmaking with black ash trees is a culturally significant practice that has been around for thousands of years. It’s present in Indigenous origin stories and ceremonial practices, as well. Basketmaking is a process with many steps, which starts with harvesting a tree, stripping it of its bark, pounding it to make splints, preparing the splints to be woven, and finally weaving them into baskets.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, a scientist, professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, wrote about basketmaking traditions for Potawatomi people in her New York Times bestseller book “Braiding Sweetgrass.”
“Black ash and basket makers are partners in a symbiosis between harvesters and harvested: ash relies on people as the people rely on ash. Their fates are linked,” she wrote.
The emerald ash borer, a small, metallic-green beetle, arrived in the U.S. from Asia. It’s not certain how it arrived, but researchers believed it could have come on wood packing material like pallets or crates. It was first detected in the Midwest in 2002 and its presence was confirmed in Vermont in 2018. The beetle has been confirmed in every county of the state, mostly recently in Essex County, which was thought to be the final holdout of unaffected ash trees in Vermont.
Experts say almost no black ash trees will survive the spread of emerald ash borer, but there are groups who are working to preserve what’s left and honor the trees that won’t survive.
Joanne Garton, one of the workshop organizers, said the logs for the workshop were harvested from two areas that have been affected by emerald ash borer: one in Hardwick, and another in Green River Reservoir State Park in Hyde Park.
The wood is extremely heavy – it is unique in its ability to hold large amounts of water, thriving best in swampy, wet areas.
Kerry and Aaron Wood both apprenticed for three years under master basketmaker Jeanne Brink, a cultural preservationist who passed away last year. They have since helped lead multiple workshops, including this series of splint-making workshops.
Community forester Garton said it’s unique that the workshops can focus specifically on black ash tree education and outreach.
“We know the clock is ticking with ash and emerald ash borer, so it’s felt very appreciated and timely,” she said. “This type of work, we won’t be doing it forever. Eventually, we (likely) won’t have logs to pound.”
Garton said at the moment, there’s a bottleneck of logs to be pounded, which takes a lot of people power. She said that while managing emerald ash borer-infested trees, which can involve cutting down trees, some land managers are trying to get these felled trees to basketmakers. People with all kinds of interests and backgrounds have been showing up to these workshops, and she said everybody’s contribution weaves together in this collective effort.
“You end up becoming part of the story because you chose to be present in it,” she said.
A couple dozen people showed up to the most recent workshop, despite bitterly cold winds. Even more people attended the previous workshop in Hardwick, and it coincided with the Hardwick Farmers Market. VTDigger attended both. Some attendees had woodworking experience, some were interested in the basketmaking process, some were just coming to learn as much as they could.
One of the workshop leaders, Aaron Wood, explained that the goal when making splints is to pound every square inch of the log with sturdy, even whacks.
He said in each tree ring in the trunk of the black ash, which represents one year of tree growth, there is a distinction between the wood the tree makes throughout that year. The wood a tree makes in the spring is softer, like straws, because it is growing quickly and pulling water and nutrients up through its roots. Pounding crushes the ‘straws’ and leaves behind the ‘late growth,’ which is when tree growth slows down in the summer and into the fall.
Equipped with the warmth of a small fire, hot cider and a pile of mallets, workshop participants started whacking on the 6- to 8-foot logs, their collective bangs dipping into and out of synchrony.
Then, mallet-wielders tried their hand at peeling the strips of wood, which were pale, a little shaggy and splintered, and curved slightly as they were freed from the log. After a few hours, several dozen splints formed a pile on a moving blanket by the next stage of the process – splitting. Splints can often be peeled even further to make thin, but very strong, “wooden ribbons,” as Kerry Wood described them.
Aaron Wood said that once these logs are processed into splints, they can be preserved for hundreds of years. He said preparing them now can keep the basketmaking tradition alive, even if black ash trees largely disappear from the landscape. He also hopes there might be enough black ash trees protected from the emerald ash borer that people will be able to visit them.
“‘This is our relative. This is one that we have been saving,’” Wood said. He said he hopes to be able to tell people if there are living examples of the tree. He said it’s important to try, “so that people can come and appreciate it and develop that relationship with it.”
Mattison Brady, who helps to monitor a small plot for the progression of emerald ash borer in the area, said he enjoyed learning more about the basketmaking process.
“In the last half hour, I just kind of got the tactile experience of how hard you have to hit a log and what it takes to pull it up…” he said. “Which I didn’t know until this moment. So that’s pretty cool.”
Brady also appreciated the community element of the event.
Garton, the community forester, said there are some efforts underway to slow the spread of emerald ash borer, or EAB. She is a certified pesticide applicator, and administers systemic insecticide, which is injected into the base of the trunk, on a small number of ash trees on state lands. She said the insecticide can be very effective at protecting a tree from an infestation, but it needs to be injected every couple of years. It’s more of a targeted method, and it’s generally not practical or cost effective to treat woodland trees, according to the Urban Forestry Program.
There is also a collective effort among many partner groups, like the Intervale Center and the NorthWoods Stewardship Center, to gather black ash seeds with volunteers and preserve them for the future. Another citizen-science ash monitoring program works to identify ‘lingering trees,’ which are trees that seem to have survived an emerald ash borer infestation that impacted the rest of the ash trees in the area. Saving these seeds are of particular interest, especially if they seem to have resisted the beetle.
“You’re running the clock a little against EAB, and (against) these trees dying,” Garton said.
