Thursday, February 1, 2018

Blowing up the winter night

Balsam that just couldn't take it any more
When the mercury is cringing at the bottom of the thermometer you can sometimes hear shots coming from the bush. It sounds like a .22 rifle. Who would be shooting in the dead of a cold winter's night and with such a small caliber? No sane person, that's for sure.
If you mark the direction carefully and investigate the next day you won't find the snowshoe tracks of a human being but rather just a tree with its trunk split. Trees with lots of moisture, like balsam fir and balsam poplar are the usual victims. The sap freezes deeper and deeper, expanding all the while, until eventually the pressure is too great for the strength of the wood. The tree ruptures in an explosion and in the stillness of a crisp Boreal Forest night the sound carries like a rifle shot.
So there wasn't a Mad Trapper out there after all, just trees driven insane by unrelenting cold.

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