And as they rustle they also twinkle, their lustrous upper surfaces forever catching the light like thousands of little mirrors flashed in mischievous fingers to dazzle the eyes. Peattie goes on to talk about the way the aspen has interacted with the world around it. He talks about the aspen log that was kept burning all year long in the open fireplaces of the Hudson's Bay Company trading posts. He talks about the creatures that depend on the aspen. The inner bark, even though bitter, is the favorite food of the beaver, and Aspen poles are the preferred material of beaver dams.
Porcupines also feed on the inner bark, and live in the aspen's branches.
I, myself, could not have told you that the wind whispering its way through the aspen leaves makes a softer, more delicate sound than it does in the Cottonwood, nor did I know that snowshoe rabbits fed on the bark. But there was one thing about the aspen I did know, only because my sister is a graduate student in biology. The roots send out shoots, which eventually become saplings and then trees. Because each trunk is genetically identical, and attached to all the others. Even what seems to be a dead tree is not a dead tree, because the roots, nurtured by the other trees in the cluster, survive below ground.