Tag Archives: winter

A Sap Run

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3.10.13 ~ Orange, Massachusetts

Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plow is started, comes the sugar harvest.  It is the sequel of the bitter frost; a sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter.
~ John Burroughs
(Signs & Seasons)

3.10.13 ~ Orange, Massachusetts

We had no idea what a treat we were in for when we checked into a motel in Orange, Massachusetts Saturday night.  Our plan was to spend the night, grab a breakfast somewhere, and head over to a family reunion in the neighboring town of Athol on Sunday afternoon.  In the morning we discovered a great place to have breakfast, on Johnson’s Farm, a restaurant, sugar house, and gift shop!  Maple syrup production was well under way, the old-fashioned way.

3.10.13 ~ Orange, Massachusetts

Sugar weather is crisp weather.  How the tin buckets glisten in the gray woods; how the robins laugh; how the nuthatches call; how lightly the thin blue smoke rises among the trees!  The squirrels are out of their dens; the migrating waterfowls are streaming northward; the sheep and cattle look wistfully toward the bare fields; the tide of the season, in fact, is just beginning to rise.
~ John Burroughs
(Signs & Seasons)

If only some way could be found to share the smell of New England in maple sugar season on a blog post!  Our olfactory receptors were tickled with delight to whiff in the aromas of wood-burning stoves and sap boiling down into syrup.  We bought a couple of jugs of pure maple syrup!  Mostly we’ll be using it in marinades, since pancakes are no longer on our grain-free diet…

3.10.13 ~ Orange, Massachusetts

It was if we had been transported back in time to a place in the heart of New England.  It made me appreciate anew that there are more “seasons” than the four four we normally notice as the year goes around.  The gnarly old tree in the above picture caught our attention – what an amazing life it has had.  And I loved the knotty pine interior of the sugar house in the picture below – so typical of New England.

3.10.13 ~ Orange, Massachusetts

When we got home Sunday night Zoë and Olga seemed a little angry with us (ears pinned back, ignoring us) for leaving them overnight, but they’re back to purring and following us around, rubbing our legs and talking to us again.

winter appointments…

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“Winter Light” by Ann Crane

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Walden)

Oh! where do fairies hide their heads,
When snow lies on the hills?
When frost has spoiled their mossy beds,
And crystallized their rills:
Beneath the moon they cannot trip
In circles o’er the plain:
And draughts of dew they cannot sip,
Till green leaves come again.
~ Thomas Haynes Bayly
(Songs & Ballads, Grave & Gay)

Oh Deer!

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Not too long ago my friend Kathy, over at Lake Superior Spirit, looked around her little house in the snowy Michigan woods for colorful or meaningful objects to take outside and put in different places in the snow for a photo shoot. She suggested I might try it sometime. :)

Well, sad to say, it hasn’t been snowing much here in southeastern Connecticut since the winter of 2011, which was the snowiest winter we ever had. But I decided to carefully pack up the most meaningful of my objects, a large doe figurine, and head out to hunt for a little patch of relatively unspoiled snow.

1.27.13.4071We wound up at Haley Farm State Park and chose a few spots on a crumbling, lovely old stone wall.  For the first picture, which is my favorite, I positioned my doe on a stone that had fallen in front of the wall.  For the second spot I put her up on top of the wall so she was a little above the camera.  Tim suggested the third setting, placing her on the ground in front of the wall.  The little birds came from home, too, as they are usually perched with the doe on a special shelf in my room.

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It was fun, Kathy!  Then something wonderful happened after we had packed up my precious doe and her little bird friends.  A few people came along with their dogs, who were off-leash.  Some of my readers may know that I’ve been afraid of large dogs ever since one bit me when I was a toddler.  But I watch Cesar Millan on the Dog Whisperer all the time, trying to understand dog behavior and overcome my deeply entrenched fears.

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With my deer totem safely in my bag and my husband by my side I watched in awe as three dogs, who seemed to belong to several different couples, greeted each other and asked each other to play.  All agreed and a fast game of chase ensued!  I suppose dog owners see this kind of thing all the time but for me it was amazing.  The dogs were running like the wind, making huge circles around a tree, and barking for the joy and thrill of being alive.  Their energy was boundless, and they whooshed close by us several times.  I wasn’t afraid!  I could interpret their behavior correctly!  Tim took the camera and tried to get a few pictures.  I will never forget this experience!

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beneath the snow…

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“Village in the Snow” by Paul Gauguin

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future – the timelessness of the rocks and the hills – all the people who have existed there.  I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape – the loneliness of it – the dead feeling of winter.  Something waits beneath it – the whole story doesn’t show.  I think anything like that – which is contemplative, silent, shows a person alone – people always feel is sad.  Is it because we’ve lost the art of being alone?
~ Andrew Wyeth
(LIFE, May 14, 1965)

wanting the sea…

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“Connecticut Shore, Winter” by John Henry Twachtman

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
 This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Exiled)

 Where Mermaids Arrange their Hair

when the cold comes…

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photo by Alyssa Bausch

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice.  In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds.  It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster.  The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow.  Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics.  At night, the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.
~ Alice Hoffman
(Here on Earth)