Red Oak (Quercus rubra).

Earl can remember when they felled some immense virgin oaks. A few of the trunks yielded forty-foot logs. This being the mid-thirties, they were harvested without the aid of chainsaws. Instead, the loggers used a two-man crosscut saw—heavy, dangerous work. These logs were debarked and used as pilings in the 1935 construction of Mississippi River Lock and Dam Number 4 at Alma, Wisconsin, about fifteen miles downstream from here.  Massive trunks of such prodigious size, especially of oak, can no longer be found. Fire suppression and logging have depleted much of the old oak savanna while making it difficult for new trees to establish, let alone grow to towering heights.

We wondered if we could find a piece thick enough to slice for a tangential specimen. The butt section of the nannyberry “log” was just wide enough to slice and make a type-high specimen. Due to its slender nature, the darker-colored pith of the trunk moves in and out of the surface plane of the slice in a pleasing way.

Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)

Maple syrup and sugar, both derived from distilled sap, have been staple foods, luxury items, and tradable commodities. Local tribes used them to season venison, squash, and wild rice. In one month a small band of Chippewa could produce 1,600 pounds of sugar and thirty-six gallons of syrup. That is an impressive amount, considering it takes thirty to fifty gallons of sap for a single gallon of syrup...

They caught the sap in little troughs made of square pieces of birch bark bent to the right shape and held by a few stitches at each end. When the season was over, the pieces of bark were straightened and buried in the earth to be used again. Their sugar was kept in covered baskets, made of birch bark…They who have made maple sugar know that although it is pleasant to the taste, it is not very pleasant work to make it; and it was especially disagreeable to those whose feet had no protection from the melting snow except buckskin moccasins.

                             —Samuel W. Pond, Dakota Life in the Upper Midwest, 1908     

Black Cherry (Prunus serotina)

The result was a range of liquors that varied from the good, to the passable, to the downright terrible: from George Washington’s Mount Vernon whiskeys to the tiger spit and popskull of the moonshiners...

The black cherries are about the size of a currant, and hang in clusters like grapes; the trees which bear them being very fruitful, they are generally loaded, but the fruit is not good to eat, however they give an agreeable flavour to brandy, and turn it to the color of claret.

          —Jonathan Carver, Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America, 1778           

The Log determined to be Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)

A small, two-story log cabin, or stuga as it is called in Swedish, sits just west of the studio. The engraving blocks used in this book, along with the covers and enclosure materials, were milled here, in the first-floor woodshop. A guest room sits on top, a small stairs leading up to it. At one time this outbuilding was used as a barn and before that, perhaps as a primary residence. There is some speculation that it has been moved from a spot further down the hill just below the quarry, where there is a small shelf of land...

We were interested in the constellation of holes made by various insects over the years, and the migration of the gray color associated with weathered wood toward the center of the end grain block. Where decay had not affected the end grain, it cut like specimen 018 but with more crispness.