Birch Bark

As you can see above, Sweden afforded endless opportunities for fixing fun light.

There's a wonderful article on bark ("The Heart of Barkness") by Jack MacRae (naturalist with the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County) in the Winter 2008 issue of Chicago Wilderness. In it, I learned that birch bark makes good firewood since it contains "highly flammable organic molecules, such as cresol, phenol, and xylenol, that make it ignite very easily." Birch was our Swedish staple for magicial fires.

In Sweden, I also learned that it is the only country with a growing forest.