Fast Approaching

    

Good Friday is fast approaching.  Now, this is not a religious point of view or ramble of any sorts.  But when I was little, Good Friday meant  some important things.  There was going to be a couple short weeks of school.  Our family was soon to get together with extended family for an Easter Feast.  The trout season was getting closer and it was time to gather night crawlers and dig red worms for bait.   Most importantly it meant helping make maple syrup.

For you city slickers out there, Mrs. Butterworth’s  or Log Cabin may seem fine enough on top of your pancakes, waffles, or French toast.  But I assure you…tasting true homemade maple syrup is in a class all by itself. 

You can buy it in local groceries and small shops now.  The Plum City Bank use to have some for sale, as did the Bitter Sweet Bakery.  For the small price sacrificing your first-born child, or taking out a second mortgage, you could probably afford a few gallons to last the whole year for you and the rest of the family.  (The good stuff is not cheap!)

Ah, but the joy of tapping trees, collecting the sap, cutting the wood to stoke the fires that would reduce down one of natures pure pleasures!  You haven’t truly had real maple syrup until you have taken part in the time-tested rituals that surround its existence. 

Have you struggled on a steep, snow covered, north-facing side hill, to drill the maples and insert the taps?  Have you ran your hands along the miles plastic tubing, checking for red and gray squirrel nibbles, to be sure that once the clear sugar starts dripping it goes to collecting tanks and not on the forest floor?  Better yet, have you toiled with metal 5 gallon buckets, one over each arm, trying to not lose your boots in shin deep mud, before getting back to a horse drawn wagon?

Have you been a spectator to a game of 3 handed pinochle, played by fathers, uncles, or grandpas, while the sap boiled, waiting patiently to turn that correct color of amber? 

 It’s been nearly three decades since I was in the middle of all those things.  However, a couple spoonfuls of the ‘good stuff’ on vanilla ice cream, or a heated drizzle’s worth covering a square of mom’s homemade cornbread, and I am back on that side hill. 

The smell of wood smoke lingers.  There is a hound asleep inside the cabin door. Plum Creek gurgles below, as the crew gathers to shed long sleeved flannels and welcome the warming March sun to young boy’s heaven on earth. The only thing sweeter than the syrup itself, are the memories I carry with me.

--TGI

Rain Drops

On the way into work today a single raindrop collided with the cracked windshield of my rusty Dodge 4x4.  It was an innocent enough of an occurrence for a springtime Monday. But it got me thinking.  There are billions of raindrops in even the smallest of showers.  Each one has a purpose I guess, though quite small. 

Collectively, raindrops can turn things green- can help things grow- can settle the dust and cool the air during the dog days of August.  So I got to digging even deeper, and wondered about special raindrops…you know, the lucky ones.

How about that drop that finds its way into a mountain stream?  He is able to have a front row seat as caddis flies and blue wings emerge.  The trout soon begin to feed, as that drop floats along.  Perhaps an aging fly fisherman delicately presents his offerings to the dimples and fins on the surface…fooling one terrifically spotted 18 incher, the man gently guides the fish to hand after a brief battle.  The drop sees a wide smile below the wrinkles of the fisherman’s eyes.  The man gently releases the fish and gives a nod to the heavens like he has done around 9000 times before, as a way of saying thanks.  He returns to false-casting thinking he is alone, but that raindrop is a witness.

 

Then there is that lucky raindrop that finds herself in a small puddle near a playground.  She is able to enjoy the squeals of  laughing children, the scolding of a distant grandmother telling Bobby, “You’re going to catch a cold,” and then, when the ruckus has settled down, is able to get a good look at the red bellied robins catching a sip before heading to their nests. 

There are other lucky raindrops out there too. Ones that find themselves smack dab in the middle of wedding ceremonies, or quiet walks at dusk, or the ones preceding rainbows.  Sometimes a lucky one even finds himself on a shoulder of hiker, or a canoe paddler exploring beautiful lands and water.

 Out of those billions, I bet a raindrop or two have settled down briefly on a strutting tom’s fan, or on the colorful crown of a drake wood duck before getting shaken off.   

 It makes me realize that I am not a drop of rain. But by looking close enough, and taking the time to think, there are miracles in front of us to behold each day. Even if it is through the cracked windshield of a rusty Dodge 4x4.


-TGI