woodlandcreature: The Sugar Season

Most years, this sugar camp runs for about three, maybe four weeks. We always have a good time working together and enjoying the early spring sunshine with our friends. But this year brought us only a brief moment in this place where it's just right to tap the trees, collect the sap and make what we all cherish. I'm grateful that my friends know all the signs so very well and can call us all to join together. For maybe 16 years now, I have heard that call and I come. I like feeling as though I'm a part of something as old as the trees.

Anyone who lives in the Northland doesn't quite trust a day in March when it's in the sixty degree range. It won't stay...We know it won't stay, because it's always followed by a snap of 10 below and a truckload of snow during the basketball tournaments.

This year, however, our wariness was soothed by a continuation of warmth and while flooding edges our state, Spring just held her ground and has settled in.

That same warmth and soothing we felt tells the trees that their jobs await them to grow their leaves and provide nutrition to their bodies. Hence our brief moment. That small window of opportunity when the sap contains mostly the energizing sugar and water, no chloroscopic materials, no cellulose to help build the cell walls of the new leaves, just the jumpstarting juice...the very thing that will turn the leaves to fiery reds, oranges and flashy yellows as the snows come again.

I love to see the different bands of sugar color when I pour them together in my storage jars. Each batch is a little bit different, with darker brown for more cooking time or finer character for the humidity in the air as we stirred it in the ash trough with our paddles. I think about how we laugh and joke as we stir...

Nature's best sweetness...

But speaking of sweet, look at these ladies!

When I arrived to help set up this year's closing ceremony, I found another rite of Spring taking place. The hiding of Easter eggs. And the rabbits hiding eggs were eager for my help.

One hundred and six Easter eggs we rabbits hid...

When I joined in to hide some, I found myself laughing at the technique of one particularly skilled smaller rabbit. She's a special rabbit who wears no ears...but her hiding had a sense of humor to it that some of us older rabbits might have left somewhere along the way.

The hiding rabbits are stealthful creatures...working under the cover of the brush.

During the closing ceremony, we say our words of encouragement for the new year. Talk about our friends who are no longer collecting sap with us and what they taught us when they were here. We listen to each others' stories and learn...