Birchbark is the outer covering of birch trees, which peels off naturally in thin, papery sheets. Unlike most tree bark that's rough and crumbly, birchbark is smooth, flexible, and waterproof, making it surprisingly useful.

For thousands of years, Native American peoples across the northern forests used birchbark to build canoes light enough to carry but strong enough to navigate rivers and lakes. They also fashioned it into containers, shelter coverings, and even wrote on it like paper. The bark's natural oils make it resistant to water and rot, so a well-made birchbark canoe could last for years.

You can recognize birch trees by their distinctive white bark marked with dark horizontal lines. The bark peels in layers like pages of a book, which is why it worked so well as a writing surface. Early settlers learned these techniques from Indigenous peoples, and birchbark crafts remain an important cultural tradition today.

When gathering birchbark, people take only what the tree naturally sheds or carefully harvest from trees already fallen, since removing too much bark from a living tree can harm or kill it.