"You clean up well"

I heard that quote this past weekend, at our Community Christmas concert. I was the MC, the host, the person whose knees got to shake at the microphone. I wore a dress, shoes with heels and the pantyhose that tie one to the other. It's not normal for me to clean up in that way. I'd much rather clean up with a shovel.

This morning we were out a smidgen after 4. There was no wind, the air was crisp, and quiet. Only the soft scrape of shovels hitting pavement and the odd car traveling by broke the silence. It reminded me of maple sugaring. Even with the season some two and a half months away, I find myself delighting in the fact that we are sugarmakers. And that this snow is the first soft cold blank that will usher in another season of bliss. Already I'm looking forward to nights of lying awake, waiting for 3 or 4 AM to start boiling sap into syrup.

Why do we do it? It certainly is easier to take a road trip to find a local commercial sugarshack in Natick, or further a field in the Berkshires. And it's even easier to go to Whole Foods to pick up a gallon of Vermont, New Hampshire, Canadian, or New York best. Why? It's the question that plagues me every Fall into Spring. It's the question I ponder with each thankful shovel full of snow I clear off our driveway. Thankful? Yes, for without winter there can be no sugaring.

It's in my bones, and courses through me like no passion ever has. It's being out in the cold and quiet. It's the sweet maple smell that freshens the air, just as the sun is licking the tops of the barren trees. It's the routine of checking the buckets. Seeing what nature has to offer us settlers. It's knowing that a lost art has been found.

So, I clean up well. I take my trusty "old lady" shovel with it's back saving bent handle and I gladly clear the driveway and stairs. Listening to the quiet. Enjoying the crisp early morning air, and comforted in the fact that in 12 weeks all this cold and snow will bring forth the sweet syrup of a life well lived.