The Heath Woods

One of my greatest pleasures as a maple farmer is the opportunity to range the forest in different seasons. After nearly two decades of farming these hills, they are deeply familiar to me and yet, with changing seasons, I can sometimes find myself “lost in the woods”, a delicious sensation that reminds me that this forest is alive and changing.

As I trek through the woods, pulling taps at the end of the harvest, I am struck by how many memories are stirred, what gifts and frights these woods have given me, how they’ve shaped my life. I recently read an essay in National Geographic by Garrison Keillor, storyteller and humorist (and host of Prairie Home Companion). It’s a personal geography, recounting his 70-some years of life in Minnesota, and in his unique poetic way, Keillor paints a portrait of a lived life through the places it has inhabited. I inhabit these woods, but I am just one small life form that does so and ultimately I am just passing through, a negligible being in an environment altered by so many forces through the ages.

It was on this spot in the North Bush, I recall, where many years ago my father-in-law and I stopped tapping on a still and grey winter day to sit on a rock and eat our lunch. The dog’s hackles rose and we looked up to see a large silent shape gliding across the nearby slope. It took us a moment to realize it was a wolf. I held tight to the dog’s collar but she seemed in no hurry to race after the animal, as if joining us in wonder at the rarity and majesty of this creature.

It was also in the North Bush one April that I once came upon a clutch of eggs – perhaps partridge – nestled in a small cave of roots at the base of a maple. Now, when pulling taps at the end of the harvest, I’m always careful to look at the tree base to see if I might ever find another such treasure.

On a sunny winter’s day last year in the Back Bush, Gavin and I were tapping trees and as we drilled, the sap was already running. We wrapped our arms around the trees, our faces close to the bark, and stuck out our tongues to catch the sweet dripping sap.

Earlier this winter, up high on the top of the ridge in the West Bush, a snowstorm was moving in fast. As I gently tapped the spile into the tree, mere inches from my hand a red squirrel darted from a crevice to scamper away from my intrusion. Startled, I stepped back and waited a few moments to watch it return to his shelter to escape the building winds. I came back to this tree in April, the woods so different with the onset of Spring, and wondered if I might spy the squirrel again as I removed the tap, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Down the Main Bush trail, or Tita Trail (named after a great aunt), three growing sons have flown countless times on their sleds, alternately paddling along by hand where the slopes flatten out, then zipping down the steep curves to come flying into the front yard and on down the driveway.

On the upper slopes of the North Bush there is a beautiful white quartz rock. In the Fall, the leaves create a tapestry on its hard white surface, in the winter, it disappears under snow, and in late Spring, it emerges again, with fresh soft mosses growing upon it, tempting my hand to rest on the green down that blankets its ancient and durable form.

Up high near the ridge, an escarpment of tumbled rocks is always a thrilling sight, no matter what the season. In winter, large ice flows cascade down its face creating a dramatic high alpine scene; in summer, thick green forest hides its caves and shelter the animals that seek refuge there.

Not everything brings pleasure in these woods.

I’ll never forget the forest tent caterpillar outbreak. The tiny invaders munched their way through the canopy of the entire Main Bush. Trunks vibrated with their marching bodies and one could hear their frass falling to the ground as they ate their way through the forest. By early June, the leaves were gone. The trees limbs and trunks were draped in webs, turning the forest into a haunted, dark and alien place.

And then there was the ice storm. A mid-December storm brought a thick coating of ice that wreaked havoc on the forest. Limbs encased in ice crashed down and whole trees ripped up from the earth. The sound alone was remarkable. When all was done, the devastation overwhelmed. Bringing in a crop in the short months to come seemed an impossibility. Good friends and neighbors came out in the snow and helped us lift fallen sap lines as best we could, allowing us to recover enough for the harvest. But we lost over 1000 taps, a fifth of our production, and it is only now that some of those trees can be tapped again. The debris in the woods still lies thick and many areas in the forest have changed their character where holes in the canopy opened up, allowing new types of undergrowth.

My livelihood depends upon this forest, but it has become much more than that. With each passing year, memories build and my life story becomes more deeply entwined with these trees, slopes and rocks.

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