Almost Spring

Imagine a Currier & Ives print of snowy upland hardwood forest, a draft horse and sledge, a large barrel on the sledge, and a family pouring sap into the barrel from pails hung on maples in the high sugar bush. March's alternating cold nights and warming days has stimulated a gush of sap to be drawn down to the sugaring house where it will be boiled down to golden maple syrup.

Fast forward to today, where miles of plastic hose fan out from the roadside collection tanks snaking up into the high sugar bush maples. The drips of each maple tree run successively into larger hose until down at the tank the hose is an inch or better in diameter. Every few days a tank truck comes along and pumps out perhaps 500 gallons of sap from the tanks, moves on to the next tanks, and hauls it all to one of a few sugar houses left in the area.

Despite the modern methods, a half gallon of one of nature's more distinctive sweeteners costs $30 for Class B, our family's favorite because it has a richer taste than the lighter colored Class A.

Although our bigger lakes and ponds remain frozen more than a foot thick, creeks and shallow wetlands increasingly sport open water, which attracts wary pairs of Canada geese scouting for nesting areas. This pair swimming among the skim ice may be the same pair that last year attempted a nest in this wetland only to lose the eggs to raccoon or another egg-eating predator. They'll try again, if only because it's almost Spring.