The Sugar Shack

Days like today, when the sun finally seems risen from its lazy banking along the horizon to announce the arrival of Spring, and the only clouds in the sky are wispy jet contrails smeared in every direction matching the thick blotches of snow still left covering the ground, remind me of a tiny old shack standing in a bit of woods with smoke piping happily from its tiny metal chimney.

When I remember the happy times of being a kid, there are specific images that immediately pop into my head; the local village fair with its carnival rides and sugar-smelling thick hot air, or the old timber train bridge that ran over the crick behind my cousin's house where we would spend hours fishing and exploring.  The Sugar Shack is one of these as well.

Late winter and early spring have some magic about them.  The clean beauty of the snow still blankets the countryside, but the sun is out longer, making it easier to be outside.   It is when nature is truly in balance - light and dark, warm and cold, beauty and ugliness.  

As I walked today, the tree branches above me were different.  Their buds were starting to swell.  Life was starting to course through their veins.  Like most things truly delicious, maple syrup comes from collecting this life from nature and adding a little extra energy.  The Sugar Shack was our source of energy. 

The melting snow made the ground in the woods between the trees and on the trail very soft and muddy.  I can remember my boots getting stuck a few times and having to flail like a wounded bird to free myself.  The sucking sound that came from the brown mud always made me laugh.  The parallel lines of the tree trunks were dotted by white pails hanging everywhere.  On a warm day, those pails would fill with sugary sap.

It was something so appealing to the senses - the charred smell of the burning wood heating the vats of sap, the candied syrup coming off the pan in thick caramel strands, the freshly carved hole in the side of the tree leaking the wet sweetness (sometimes in steady streams) down the metal spouts.  Freezing toes from collecting the pails in the woods were easily warmed by a few minutes sitting inside the shack.  It was a simple wood frame with corrugated metal walls sitting atop some stone.  Couldn't have been more than 15x15, with thin windows on the south and west sides.  A shelf above the windows held an array of various tools, a spoon hung off a hook (for tasting of course) and scratched on the beams framing the sliding door were the yields from the past years.

Sat in the far chair away from the door was Elmer.  A tiny waif of a man, puffing on his pipe, his brimmed hat sitting just askew over his crinkled brow. For some reason I can't remember him having teeth or not, but he was nearly always smiling.  I think it's because he smiled through his eyes more than anything.  There are only two places I picture Elmer when I try to remember him:  on his orange tractor seat bouncing happily as he drove the trailer through the woods collecting sap, or sitting on that corner chair in the sugar shack, tending the fire and giving his predictions on the weather.

In reality I'm sure my brothers and I were only in those woods for a day or two each spring, but remembering it makes it seem almost like a special vacation.  As though it lasted for weeks, with no school in between. I remember it as though those woods were our home until the life in the trees had reached its climax and could no longer be tapped into our little pails.  What a vacation that would be - collecting life from trees and turning it into candy!