Le Temps Des Sucres

The year before we’d walked along the Welsh Wye Valley so for Dan’s first birthday we rented a cabin near Midland’s Wye marsh. New parents with no money, we spent the entire time hiking through the frozen woods, our little boy strapped to Rich’s back. I’ll always equate our son’s birthday with sugar-making time, as the bush was full of tapped maples. That happy weekend sixteen years ago we learned that forty gallons of sap made one gallon of syrup. So much for so little; a diluvian cautionary tale reminding us to savor the rare and sweet in our lives.

Image by Yvonne Boothroyd, Toronto