The Sweetest Memory

   If I follow the driveway past what was once my parents’ farmhouse, there is a path along a small steep field that burrows into a line of woods dotted by sugar maples, the occasional oak, and battered pine trees on the edge of a vast wetland.   Other paths, less well maintained, lead to large fields once used for baling hay or pasture for our Holsteins.   As a child, I felt great power picking up a stick and shepherding forty placid black and white beasts through the woods, across the road, and into the barn for milking.  Today I can only return to those woods in my ever fading memories.

       I imagine that the disused path is badly in need of clearing.  Many bramble bushes and small saplings have by now sprung up to create a barrier.  Just beyond the hilltop's rocky out-croppings grow old sugar maples that protect the wildflowers of early spring.  If you peer carefully into the thick undergrowth, you will see a faint sign that long ago stood a building used to produce maple syrup.   My father allowed himself to show no sadness when the sugar house, which provided a small income each February, collapsed from age and harsh elements.   Instead, he re-purposed the stones of the crumbling foundation into a retaining wall surrounded by flowers, bushes, and a smoke tree.  These are now enjoyed by the new owners of the home that was in my family for over a century.  Remembering these woods in winter is the ointment I apply each year to a heart that does not easily come to terms with change and loss. 

          As a child of five or six, I experienced some of the deepest lake effect snowfalls in New York history.   By the sixties my father's old but reliable tractor had completely replaced the draft horses that once plowed a route from the sugar house to the mature maples throughout the woods.  The path had to be cleared regardless of weather conditions.  After  a tediously long time, the deep snow was plowed and the sugar house was officially re-opened.  

     Profit margins were too small to waste a penny, so the old tools, buckets  and machinery were checked for damage and repaired if possible.  My father and several hired hands would then drill  small spouts into each sugar maple.   My father carefully supervised the placement of each tap, for if the new holes were drilled too close to old ones, large sections of the wood would be damaged and the tree slowly die.  Only then did the workers hang a bucket on each tap, in readiness for those days in late January or early February when sunny days were followed by nights of bitter cold.  On these days, the sweet watery sap flowed upward and out be emptied by hand into a large vat.  The tractor pulled the vat through the woods until full.  The vat was then brought up the hill that nestled against the sugar house and the precious liquid emptied into a holding bin.  From the bin, the sap flowed downhill into silvery evapor-ating pans deep in the sugar house. 

       In an image reminiscent of salmon working their way upstream through man made ladders, the sap was heated and evaporated through a series of parallel pans.  The process was monitored as long as the season lasted.  If the temperature was too high, the sap would boil over dangerously.  Small pats of butter were ready to be tossed in to lower the bubbling syrup back to a safe level.  Wood that had been cut and stacked all summer was now used in a  roaring fire until forty-six gallons of sap boiled down to produce a single gallon of pure maple syrup.  As it entered the final pan, a small amount was poured into a vial and its color  com-pared to vials of different gradation.  Only the light amber grade A syrup commanded the public’s top dollar – the darker syrup was kept for home use or to make maple sugar.  We felt ourselves the luckier consumers because the dark grade tasted stronger and sweeter.   

      Unless he was milking cows in the barn, my father stayed in the woods in the uninsulated sugar shack until all that day’s sap was boiled into syrup, sometimes not finishing until four in the morning.   The lonely, tedious job was relieved only by the rare visitor to give him respite.  Few tackled the bone-chilling elements to see syrup made in these snowy woods.      

        I now imagine myself at age five or six being dressed at the farmhouse in so many layers of pants, sweaters and coats that if I fall down, I may never rise again.  My hands are covered by warm, if unmatching mittens, my feet in layers of socks and stuffed into somewhat waterproof boots.  My mother opens the door, entrusting me with sandwiches and a Hellmann’s mayonnaise jar filled with warm milk and a generous dollop of Hershey’s chocolate syrup.  I begin the slow walk up the hill, fighting the snow that has again drifted across the trail. 

      As I struggle through the beautiful but often hip-deep snow, my breath turns into the whitest fog.  There is no social worker to accuse my parents of child endangerment.  But I know these woods well, and confidently conquer the crest of the hill using the sweetly scented thick smoke rising out of the rooftop chimney as my reassuring guidepost.  

        I round the bend past the enormous pile of wood and enter a door on the far side.  My dad greets me in a wool cap, ear flaps down, his twinkling blue Irish eyes warming me more than the hot chocolate I bring in my hands.  We greet each other and then I sit patiently as he wolfs down his supper.   I assist here and there, bringing in a small piece of wood, funneling out the imperfections like sugar sand or dropping a big pat of butter into the evaporation pans to see the magical lowering of the boiling liquid.  But more often, I try to steal a bit of the thick nectar and wait for it to cool enough that I can sip its delicately fragrant sweetness.  

       I must leave to walk home alone before dusk.  But if I wait for my father to close up, the sun will have set and the black silhouettes of the trees will be lit only by a sparkling blanket of deep snow.   He will place his large work glove covered hand over my small one, and walk us slowly and deliberately over the hill and out into the field that overlooks our home.  

            As we cross the field, his boots sink deep into the snow but mine float on a thick crust formed only on the chilliest winter nights.   The first stars appear above us in radiant assur-ance of happiness and security.  Although this promise cannot be kept, it will remain in the memory palace of a young girl’s heart.