Not a good thing.

I also notice that the tree is planted too deep -- the appearance is of a telephone pole rather than the flared base of an appropriately planted tree.

You might try pulling back the mulch & soil at the base. Go deep enough until you find where the base begins to flare out. Likely you'll find the problem underground, either dead water-soaked bark or a girdling root.

I would check on what Jean001 said as there may be a problem there if its a grafted tree. However as high as the damage goes your tree is almost certainly suffering from Sunburn also known as Southwest Injury in addition to perhaps a graft below the soil line.

Here is a link that might be useful: Treating Sunburn aka Southwest Injury.

If that's bare wood where the bark is peeled off, I'd say your tree is history. But if that is fresh bark under there, then your tree is just shedding some bark and may be just fine. From the picture, I can't really tell.
Recently I had a euro plum's trunk bark split wide open. Looked like bare wood underneath. I thought it was done for. Months later it was completely barked over. It was just growing, and the old skin had to split.
Unless you see actual bare wood grain under there, I'd keep up hope.

Tcstoehr, I dearly hope you're right!! I guess I never thought about what happens to the bark as a tree grows, but it is doing extremely well, to the best of my ability to tell, and growing fast. The layer underneath does not look like bare wood----it much more resembles soft bark. Also, the peeling is happening all around

Thisisme, that was a great video! I may just do that anyway just to protect it... no harm in that, right?

I don't honestly recall if it's grafted or not, but I don't think so. I have the original tag, and it doesn't mention it...and I don't see evidence of it. But I guess I still planted it too deep??

I'll dig away at the base and see what I find. I did a bit today but I don't know how deep to go...will it definitely flare out? I'm sure when I got it I followed the directions to the best of my ability.

Thank you everyone, so very much! I'm cautiously optimistic that my favorite tree may survive...

Ann

The mice seemed to eat 2 'high all the bark of my tree.

Do you think it will survive?