Leelanau County, Michigan    March, 2013 photo by Jonathan Schechter

                                                      

Maple sugaring season is well underway; a time when glistening drop of sap roll off metal 

spiles and create musical pings in tin buckets setting the stage for the ritual of sugaring.

  My love affair with traditional maple sugaring began long ago in the hills of Plainfield, 

Vermont as a nature-loving, trail-trekking hippie at Goddard College. 

It has never ended.

Forget the calendar, for once the days drifted above freezing the backbone of winter  broke.

We are in the season of emerging skunk cabbage plants in frozen marshes.

The season of the return of the turkey vultures and the song of the bluebirds.

And the time where rural dirt roads turn to car-swallowing mud.

( Vermonters call it mud season.)

Later this week I will tap my three maple trees on my Oakland County hillside and 

collect enough sap before month's end to create a pint of  sweet amber gold. 

But most importantly the art of sugaring  in mid-March brings back maple 

sugar memories and sets the stage for new spring adventures.