The Beauty Tour

QUICK UPDATE 3/13: It’s happening: thaw weather and sap runs. Today commences a multi-day thaw. We don’t relish the forecast of temps in the 50’s or 60’s with no freezing nights. It could be a year when all the sap comes at once.

THE BEAUTY TOUR

On tapping days and tubing-maintenance days the woods crew orient themselves by the “road system” of tubing. They divvy up the sugarbush by the main lines – the PVC highways – which drain particular sections of terrain. “You work down Saddle line, I’ll head up Keystone,” Chops might say.

On days when the sap isn’t running, we sometimes ramble through the sugarbush in any direction that suits our fancy. Ana and I set out on March 4th with the intention of visiting my favorite nooks. We snowshoed up Herbie’s Highway, the logging road to the Cabin, then climbed beyond to Morningside, a broad shelf stretched between an ascent to Mt. Bend and a steep drop to Falls Brook. Having just attained this plateau we angled over and down into a favorite place I call The Draw.

The last definition of draw in the noun section at the end of a long column in Webster’s Dictionary is: 7. a land basin that water drains into or through. I learned the term from an orienteering map back in the early ’70’s. Orienteering is the sport of running through field and forest from marker to marker using a map and a compass to choose the fastest route from point to point. An orienteering map shows details like large boulders, subtle elevation changes, and depressions formed by streams. These small valleys are the draws.

The Draw feels intimate only in the context of Morningside that opens to the east and south and the hemlock-darkened ridge that flanks it to the west. The Draw’s stream flows from a spring at a rock. Once leaving The Draw, the stream gathers volume as it passes near the Cabin and descends abruptly to Falls Brook. The Draw cushions my thoughts; I savour calling it The Draw because no one else does; I recall the day of orienteering in Quebec, running across terrain new to me, finding tiny draws and ledges, knolls and old fences, all detailed on a special orienteering map.

No clutter of beech saplings
Hemlock saplings tipping under the snow pack
An elder maple with feet in the stream

Thinking we would snowshoe to another secluded nook on the far side of the Falls Brook, we followed The Draw up then dropped over and down to the brook. Upstream, pillows of snow decked each boulder. The snow had set up and thus supported our snowshoes; it was the rare day when the travelling was easy. Out with the old plan, in with the new: the brook drew us, we entered its draw.

-AC

Keying the Senses:
Enjoy discerning the variation in pitch.