Transformation

I walked outside early this morning to check out how the garden liked yesterday's rain. It was still windy, and like a new mom, I worried for the little seeds I had sown during the week. But generally, children are supple and resilient. In fact, my own little "babies" had loved that cold rain and were doing fine.

I remember being supple and resilient myself. Not that I'm fragile these days, but working in the garden revealed a few changes. I had to stand up regularly to ease the pain in my knees; walking on the uneven ground takes just a wee bit more care than it used to; garden gloves, a big hat, sunglasses and long sleeved shirts are a must. I think the days of physical labor from early morning to late evening are behind me now.

As I stood quietly admiring our handiwork and God's prodigal design for life, I listened to the sounds made by the huge trees that surround our yard. Most are just now beginning to bud out, and together it looks like a huge wad of pale green gauze has been caught in the top of the trees. This is not primal forest, but these beauties are old by my standards — many have stood out there for at least two hundred years.

In the wind they sway slowly back and forth. And they creak loudly. They aren't fragile yet, either, but their creaking speaks of changes afoot. Little saplings don't creak in the wind. For all of life, change is the name of the game. Without it, there would be no concept of "life" at all. Existence would be dull and repetitive to the point of madness, with no way out. Change means surprise, creativity, beauty.

The "prime" of life isn't just one segment of one phase of being — it's the whole thing, from the birth of the Universe some thirteen billion years ago to this moment and beyond. Wow.

Carpenter Bees

I don't remember who it was, but years a go a neighborhood friend and I were sitting outside eating our sandwiches. All of a sudden he screamed and threw his sandwich on the ground — a bee had found its way into the egg salad and didn't take kindly to being eaten. Fortunately, my little friend wasn't allergic to bee stings.

I was young enough that this made an immediate and unshakable impression on me. I suppose I could have spent the rest of my life being terrified of egg salad sandwiches, but my child-brain settled more logically on fear of the stinging creature itself.

I've been stung myself a few times in these intervening years, and though it's not an experience anyone enjoys, it obviously didn't kill me, either. One time I stuck my bare foot into a shoe and discovered that solitary wasps can sting repeatedly. Another time a yellow jacket, dazed by chemicals sprayed into its nest a few days earlier, flew up my skirt and rudely stung the inside of my upper thigh. That one did cause a nasty reaction, though I'm not convinced it was allergic on my part; I think the poor creature just returned our toxic favor. But now I carry one of those bee-sting injection kits, just in case.

Last year I discovered carpenter bees. These are impressive fliers, since clearly their bodies are much too large for those filmy little wings to support; they are encumbered with a ponderous, shiny black rear segment that looks like armor with a rather attractive purplish or greenish patina. In spite of their hefty build, they zip around like humming birds, hovering motionless in the air for long periods of time before zooming upward or sideways or just disappearing so quickly I can't tell where they've gone. They sound like mini-helicopters to me. Impressive.

Our school/convent building was designed by a California architect, so naturally it's redwood. Boy, do the CB's like that. Just about this time each year they wake up and begin preparations for mating, which means the males scout out a nice wooden locale and then begin to bore amazingly precise 1/2" holes in it. You can actually hear them drilling. If left to their own devices for years, they can take down a building.

But I'm more impressed with the creature itself. The males protect the nesting site by hovering menacingly outside. The larger the site, the more boys hang out in the 'hood. There is usually only one female causing all the activity. The males behave as if they have testosterone poisoning — even their buzzing sounds mean and aggressive. They make a beeline (sorry) for anyone who comes too close to the nest entrance, and if you didn't know any better you'd back off in a hurry.

The problem is these guys have no stinger. Not even a little one. Lots of bark but no bite. I think the only damage they could cause would be to fly in your eye, and that's not very likely. Now the queen can cause a lot of trouble, having a quite meaningful stinger; but she only uses it if she's actually handled roughly, a feat no one is likely to try anyway.

I just love Nature, don't you? Here are all these aggressive, macho bees dive-bombing humans and skunks and anything else within reach (and pretty much scaring the daylights out of all of us) ... but they can't do anything more than look and sound dangerous. Amazing. A wee tick can make you miserable without you even knowing it has buried its head in your skin; a honker bee can chase you twenty feet in about one second, yet is capable of little more than ruffling your hair.

Wouldn't it be just grand if humans could holler up a storm, but couldn't figure out how to build bombs or what to do with an Uzi?

Our Friend Mary

This probably will sound tacky coming from a nun, but I've always wanted to do a retreat based on the bumper sticker "Shit Happens". Needless to say, the few Sisters to whom I proposed this idea when I first thought about it some fifteen years ago were not amused. But I think there is a huge truth in that sticker. Horrible things happen to people who, no matter what skeletons may lurk in their historical closets, don't deserve it.

Our Community has a wonderful friend who has visited us for years when the New York Marathon happens. She runs it. This has always fascinated me, who has run one mile once in my entire life and I still think of it as a major achievement. But our friend Mary runs twenty-six miles, and she does it every year. God knows how many miles she runs in between the marathons.

Mary is a lot more than a runner, of course. She is a physical therapist, a gentle woman, a good soul. Before I moved north I always looked forward to marathon time, just to have her quiet, solid presence in the house.

Now she is caught in medical hell betwen two diagnoses, neither of which is particularly hopeful. Both involve the degeneration of her muscles. I'm angry, and I'm sad, and I'm scared for her.

I don't believe in a God who picks and chooses people to punish or reward. And I for sure don't believe in a God who is capricious and mean. But Mary's situation seems particularly cruel to me, and I want to blame Someone.

I'll never forget the year when the weather for the race was beastly — freezing cold rain fell all day. Many runners dropped out because the conditions were so brutal, but Mary hung in there and finished. She didn't, and probably never will, come in first. Winning isn't the point at all, it is just getting it done. Trying something difficult and finding out you can do it. It is getting through the hard stuff, the hills, the sleet, the feeling that you can't take one more step.

But you do.

I guess Mary's going to need all that experience and self-knowledge over the next weeks and months. The marathon's grueling one-step-at-a-time training has become the basis for the one-day-at-a-time life she has been thrust into. The sparks of grit and determination and present moment awareness and trust that live deep within Mary will continue to guide and strengthen her.

So yes, "shit happens". It pays no attention to the person or the circumstance or anything else. It just happens. But it doesn't happen in a vacuum; it doesn't rule the day all by itself.

Thank God for Mary and for marathons and for freezing rain. Thank God for resilience and friends and hope and love.

Hope for the Flowers

"Roses", Maria Felicitas, CHS

Remember the wonderful book Hope for the Flowers — a delightful little gift we adults exchanged with each other back in the 80s? Children's literature is fabulous stuff, and I suspect moms and dads and aunts and grandpas and other adult friends buy these books as much for themselves as for gifts. Why is that?

I'm not sure, but I think the ability of a child to observe the world with eyes of wonder and hearts wide open is something we adults have just about forgotten.

But not quite. And that teeny hint of memory just might save the world.

Imagine what life would be like if we adults could once again shut out everything around us except a daddy longlegs or a hollyhock or a tire swing over the pond on a hot summer day? If following an inchworm were more valuable to us than squeezing one more task into our busy days? If we allowed ourselves to be captivated by the glory of the rest of Earth's life community for an hour or so?

The next time you get a chance to hang out with your favorite child (and if you don't have one of those, by all means go find one), give your adult self a break. Share a child's view of Life.

My, what an idea.

Plundering

I didn't sleep much last night. Just one of "those nights" where, in spite of feeling exhausted when I retired, I awakened wide-eyed and refreshed ... at 1:30 AM. Ah, well.

I did what I always do when this happens: I read, practiced relaxation meditation, roamed around in my thoughts, and petted the dog, who is extremely generous in this regard. I figure my body knows what it needs — and what it doesn't. If I'm not sleepy right now, I will be later. This I learned in my twenties, when I was plagued by insomnia, and the approach continues to serve me well as sleepless nights become more frequent in my later years. I think of it as found time and try to use it respectfully.

Part of last night's musings sprung from watching The Corporation for the second time, and from reading Genesis Farm's latest newsletter cover article. [If you're not on their mailing list, by all means sign up. And participate. And contribute.) Both sources call our culture into question.

We are a nation of plunderers.

We are certainly not alone, as nations go, but we lead the way in many of the most destructive practices in existence today. I keep telling myself we aren't bad people, we're just unconscious. But our Community facilitator constantly reminds us: "that which is unconscious is unjust". I have yet to be able to prove her statement wrong.

"Just unconscious" is not an excuse, and it's a sorry explanation. In service of our own desires, we are pushing all of Earth's life systems into steep decline. I don't mean for this blog to be a scolding, or a warning, or a judgment. I have spent most of my own fifty-plus years contributing to Earth's demise, and I know speaking from arrogance is self-serving and worse than useless.

We might try asking ourselves if there is a way to live differently.

I think we begin to make necessary changes not through action but through passion. As in Christ's passion, where Jesus submitted himself to judgment and death without seeming to stand up for his rights. He was trying to show people what it means to live differently, to step away from destructive ways of being, such as slavery, discrimination, and exclusion. Two thousand years ago, no one could possibly have imagined what is happening on Earth today. Yet Jesus tried every way he could to teach us to live with compassion and respect for all of God's creation, to love with such intensity that one would sacrifice the self in order to reveal the Self of creation and possibility. Jesus was trying to set us free.

If we were to practice passion ourselves, we would have to back off from our impress on the Earth. At this point, we'd better be backing up pretty far and pretty fast, because there really isn't much time left.

Pay attention to what you buy, what you use, what you discard and leave for others to deal with. What is your personal impress on Mother Earth? That should give you an idea where to begin in your own life, which is the only thing you can really change anyway.

We live in bondage to a life of consumerism and competition. The first steps to freedom are exciting. Take a few today.

Stardust

Life is incredibly fragile. But it is also profoundly hardy. Go figure.

Last night we attended the school's annual Spring Gala, a delightful affair with good food, terrific company and a fabulous collection of baskets, services, tickets, trips and hundreds of other tempting items that can be obtained through silent and live auction. Parents and school folks alike work for months to make this happen, and everyone looks forward to the evening.

So do the Sisters. We founded this School forty years ago, and they are thriving. This benefit evening is wildly succcessful, and we are deeply grateful for our excellent administrators, staff, teachers, students and parents. On this night there's always something being auctioned that fits in nicely with our own focus of Earth education through sustainable and simple living. So we join in the fun, bid on a few things, renew friendships, and probably eat more than we should. It's a wonderful night.

Unfortunately and quite unexpectedly, one of our youngest Sisters, sitting quietly at a table, passed out. There was immediate help for her; the chef was a paramedic, two nurses and a doctor appeared from the group of party-goers, one parent called 911, and the entire group supported the mini-drama with prayers.

Our Sister was taken to the hospital where she's suffering the predictable poking and prodding to see if anyone can discover what caused her loss of consciousness. She seems fine this morning and is a bit embarrassed about the whole thing, though they're still x-raying and scanning and drawing blood to complete the detective process. God willing they find nothing and life will go on as before. Almost.

This Sister is unusually hardy; last summer she spent nearly every day, all day, out in the sun in our first-year garden. That's a lot of back-breaking work in really hot weather. She didn't faint then. She teaches every day and only misses a day when our Community activities demand it. She doesn't faint there. She does everything everyone else does throughout their lives — she cooks and cleans and plays and studies ... and she doesn't faint during any of those efforts.

We may never know what caused last night's episode. Probably not, in fact. There is so very much we don't know about the grandeur and mysteries of our bodies. So we enjoy our hardiness when that's what's happening, and we remember that this, too, shall pass.

By the way, we won a gorgeous outdoor moss-lined planter, already filled with an assortment of beautiful plants. It is designed to stay outside year-round, so we'll watch those lovely plants bloom and grow, mature, wither, die back, rest, and reappear next spring as if by magic.

I think we'll put this by our new kitchen garden, where everyone who comes to school or to see us can enjoy it. When I look at it, I will remember that life is an upward spiral with no real beginning or end. Birth - life - death - transformation - resurrection - birth - life - death- transformation ... from stardust we are formed, and to stardust we shall return.

Sunset Sky

The Hour of the Deer

The blogger was under the weather this morning, and then I headed off for the city so I missed my early morning blog. Horrors.

So here I am looking at the sunlight on the wall behind my computer. The spot of Earth I'm sitting on will roll completely away from the sun in about half an hour. Something particularly holy happens in the hour before sunrise and the hour before sunset. In the morning, everything becomes profoundly quiet. Indigenous traditions called this the hour of the wolf — when the wolf headed home after a long night of hunting.

When we set our schedule to meditate during these two hours, we decided to call the sunset time the hour of the deer, since that's when our local deer herd wanders through our back meadow for a last little snack before bed.

But ah, that sunlight. Cast through the trees at a nearly flat angle to our position on Earth, it takes on a buttery shade before the oranges and reds begin to appear. Bronze sunlight dapples the woods, creating a sense that anything could appear there — deer, eagles, fairies ... who knows? The magic lasts a long time.

After the sun itself disappears behind the curve of Earth, the sky takes its turn at the palette. Wild roses, hot reds, soothing lavenders, smoky grays, deep oranges, soft violet, and then ... the most glorious shading from rich blue-green to deep navy blue. In a few weeks, this is when the bats will wake up and flutter out over the back yard, dipping and diving for the first insect appetizers of the night.

Finally, finally, the whole sky breaths itself into the blackness of deep night.

It's a show one should never miss.

Communion

I was thinking about that syrup business again this morning. It's hard not to, when your kitchen table is full of gorgeous amber bottles and folks stop by for a bottle and a chat all during the day. This is a whole new phase of the Magical Sugaring Season.

But that's not what grabbed my attention this time. It was the finishing process. That's the time when the quality of the bubbles in the sap begins to change, and the surface looks a little bit different, and if you leave it right now you'll have candy for sure.

Batch after batch I stood there, watching the bubbles blow up clearer and slower, gradually spreading across the pan. Every time this began a delightful excitement built inside of me. The syrup and I were communicating directly. I was in awe; it was telling me when to cut the heat and praise the miracle of syrup.

Thermometers are just fine, but I finally realized that it was one more piece of technology stuck there in between we two communicants. The sap and I, two different expressions of the Earth, talking with each other. We were right there in the same room. We didn't need a telephone. And when I began to listen to the sap, and pay attention to my own ability to "hear" it, magic happened.

Every batch was just a hair different from the last as the days passed. This I never would have known if I'd stuck with the gadgets instead of letting the sap teach me. I find myself resisting the temptation to buy "more professional" doodads so we can produce more syrup so we can make more money so we can ... hmmmm, what was it we wanted that money for again?

We are all teachers for each other, we marvelous amazing creations of God-through-Earth. What happened to us humans that we cut ourselves out of that great communion and began to rely on our own devices?

P.S.

But what if today you're a turkey and not a chickadee? What if the shadow stuff is holding sway right now, and it doesn't seem to make any difference if light is planning to triumph. Or if, in fact, it will. Even knowing that isn't particularly helpful news.

When you're a turkey, and you're hungry, and the shopping center is closed, and some hairbrained little chickadee is buzzing around over your head nattering on about how beautiful this storm is, gratitude and hope are just two words hanging out somewhere near the middle of Webster's Dictionary.

Crammed down there, way deep inside each of us, is a turkey who just needs to know where the next mouthful is coming from and doesn't care anything about next week, when the sun will be shining and yesterday's rain has washed all the dirty snow down the hill and into the reservoir and tasty green things are popping up all over the place.

That turkey just hangs out there in the backyard, without a clue. It's not about knowing, or belief, or trust or any of those wonderfully positive possibilities. It's about something much more solid, yet frustratingly elusive. It's about hope — that teeniest hint that the light at the end of the tunnel that isn't a freight train after all.

It's about spring — against all odds — dragging green things and longer days in its wake. Even during the turkey-times of our lives, Something whispers "hold on" into our weary hearts.

Hang in there. Don't give up just yet.

If profound Mystery means anything at all, it means that tomorrow will be a new day, filled with surprises and hope and possibilities never dreamed of. Leaves will appear on bare branches, flowers will bloom, squash and cucumbers will take over the garden in spite of your best efforts, eggs will hatch and turklettes will be born and will captivate your heart and the days will be warm and you will be ... dare it be true? ... happy again.

Aren't we strange birds?

Early morning

Finally the rain has moved on and this morning dawned clear. And cold, even though it's April and green life is sprouting all around us. Good thing God added hardiness to the blueprint of life.

I awakened with a miserable headache and a bad attitude. I hate when that happens. There are no good reasons, and the few weak ones I do have aren't worthy at all. I'm generally good-tempered, I love being where I am and doing what I'm doing and the wonderful women I live with. So what's the deal?

Our schedule changed this past weekend — we shift our days around about eight times a year, responding to the movement of the Earth around the sun rather than the clock. We all love this; it gives us a chance to meditate during the hour before sunrise. So it was deeply dark when I woke up. Now, more than an hour later, the sky is gently shaded with blues and pinks as the Earth rotates toward the sun. It's really gorgeous, and stirs the best in me, as it always does.

Maybe the deal is this: we carry a darkness within, and though it's not all (or not always) "bad", it's important to remember that my own shadowy potential exists and has power. If I ignored that possibility, then I'd also miss the wonderful things that occur only in darkness. Like new life springing out of the cold ground, or the sky subtly shifting from black velvet to pink.

Neither the headache nor the attitude will last. Darkness is sometimes scary, but light is more powerful and will always make the shadows disappear like magic. It's hard to remember all this when my head hurts and I feel like I could bite glass. Looking at the sky helps.

And it's a very good thing God threw in hardiness.

One Bird's Hardship is Another Bird's ...

... excuse to go berserk.

While the turkeys were poking around in the birdfeeder, the chickadees were practically turning somersaults in the air. I've never seen a bird more delighted to be in the middle of a blizzard. Everyone else is puffed up against the cold wind and icy snow, but not those chickadees.

I never noticed this before, but I recently read one of Tom Brown's [the famous tracker from the Pine Barrens in New Jersey] books. As a youngster he learned a lot from his good friend's grandfather, a Native American who was himself an accomplished stalker of animals. This man loved chickadees because they have an unmistakable joie de vivre.

He's right; never mind that the windchill is around forty below or the sleet is coming down like little arrows. These tiny birds are right out there, darting around in the air, singing their hearts out. They just love bad weather.

Even the little guy in this picture has an attitude, doesn't he? Perched up there with that stone bird, jaunty little stance, checking out the wind speed for another aerodynamically impossible zoom over to the apple tree. I swear he's smiling.

Can you imagine how freeing it must be to see adverse conditions as an excuse to have a blast?

Think about it.

Wasting Time

One thing you need in abundance when sugaring is patience. It takes a long, long time to boil off 39 gallons of water from the tree sap, leaving behind that one precious gallon of syrup. In fact, if it hadn't been for Charlie's fortuitous visit to our kitchen one morning, we'd still be down there, trying to process hundreds of gallons of sap in a large frying pan.

Charlie is an organic farmer who works on a nearby farm. He knows how to sugar. We struck a wonderful bargain — Charlie's advice and the use of a large 15 gallon "stove pan" in exchange for tapping a few of the trees in our wonderful sugarbush [a stand of maple trees]. But even with the magic pan and four burners on high, it takes a long time. Hours.

Oh, you can prepare the next batch of sap by doing some filtering. And you can sterilize bottles. But mostly you watch the steam rise and fill the kitchen, checking regularly to add small amounts of fresh sap as the evaporation process transforms the astonishingly clear sap to a heavier pale amber fluid.

For days on end, I'd rise around 5:00 to begin boiling down the day's sap. If I stayed by the stove, I could process close to 40 gallons in a day, sometimes working late into the night. But watching sap boil is a lot like watching paint dry, and I'd be tempted away to other things to make better use of my time. I'd take off to hang a load of laundry, make some phone calls, prepare a sermon. Of course I'd get caught up in whatever I was doing, and down in the kitchen the sap was boiling away. I'd miss a chance to add fresh sap earlier in the process, making the day's production smaller. If I'd really gotten sidetracked, I could have ruined a whole batch, which thankfully never happened.

We so easily lose our patience with a job that seems to be inefficient. Our cultural message is to do more: work more, make more money, buy more stuff. The average work week is now over 60 hours, because we can work from the minute we get out of bed until we collapse at night. We have to arrange play dates for our children because they're so busy. Wasting time is abhorrent to us, and immediate gratification is our idol.

Living this way is costly, however — to ourselves, to each other and to the Earth

The days I stayed in the kitchen were the best days. Not just for making syrup, but for my soul. My whole being slowed down; I paid closer attention to the changing sky and noticed the possum outside the kitchen door. I heard the birdsong change with the coming of spring. I thought a lot about what it means to be an expression of the Earth, and how deeply connected we are to everything around us. I got to know every nuance of that sap, and soon abandoned the thermometer for my own instincts for finishing the syrup (which, by the way, became quite reliable).

I've heard praying called "wasting time with God". I like that. Whenever I've wasted time according to our cultural standard, I've ended up happier and healthier. We need the practice of patience in our lives if we are going to survive as a species.

So start a revolution today: waste a little time.

Finished Product

Now here's a miracle for you: this is a picture of bottled sunshine. All this lovely syrup came from the energy of the sun, transformed over years into clear, sweet maple sap. If we had appropriately developed senses, we could also see hours of laughter and wonder, feel a warm and humid kitchen, witness the bonding of new friends, watch the laborers in a glass factory, hear our calls to the Mitchell man to deliver more propane, thank Bill for collecting and boiling when we had to leave for a week at the height of the season ... perhaps we could even taste the half-finished sap, dipped out into cups for a late-night refreshment of maple tea. And all of that came from the sunshine, too.

With a bit of attention and focus, we could see and feel and smell and hear miracles all around us, every day.

Adaptation

When the snow is too deep for the turkeys to find food, they — like all creatures — adapt. This isn't long-term adaptation, where bodies change and new species appear. This is the kind of movement that happens quickly, while drawing on thousands of years spent struggling and learning, gaining experience and innate wisdom. This is the miracle of survival.

As winter glides toward spring, the turkeys begin to gather in flocks, anticipating the time when toms will spread their back feathers, huff up to the the size of a Volkswagen and strut before a crowd of disinterested ladies. At least that's what it looks like to me.

Despite their reputation as profoundly lacking in mental acuity, turkeys are glorious birds; they have irridescent feathers that radiate copper and green in the sunlight. The boys sport bright blue heads and fire-engine red wattles to further attract the women when the time for mating arrives. When startled, the whole flock will take wing and sail over the trees and into the hills. Yes, they do fly, and with amazing grace. They just need a lengthy runway. Once airborne, they glide on their huge wings, looking a bit like chubby eagles.

They can be aggressive and have been seen surrounding a local housecat, cornering her in the rhododendron bush in the back yard. But mostly they gobble quietly, grazing along sedately. Occasional spats seem to occur, when they jump in the air and flap their wings furiously at each other. Or maybe they're not arguing at all, but dancing to a tune we don't hear. In any event, they never seem to hurt each other, and these encounters usually end with the participants scurrying away from each other.

Adaptation. How to compete and share at the same time. How to find each other when productive lust rises like sap to the brain. How to settle arguments and establish order among neighbors. How to protect each other and intimidate intruders. How to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. And how to locate and dine at the human's birdfeeder when the rest of the grocery store is under two feet of snow.

Teaching the children

Several days after the mapling season began, Sr. Lilli Ana's Thursday afternoon "Outdoor Adventure Club" helped collect sap. Afterwards, they gathered in our kitchen to taste the sap, learn about the seasons of a tree, see the various stages of evaporating and finishing, and finally to try out the finished syrup on biscuits they baked themselves.

The precious children in this picture will join millions of others in facing a bleak future, where food has been genetically modified beyond repair, where the Earth's resources have been exploited to exhaustion and life itself will be in danger. We don't think it has to be that way; we help educate for a different, more hopeful future — for all the children of Earth.

Grandfather Maple

This was our first year at the transformation of maple tree sap into maple syrup — our year of experimentation — to find out if we could do it and if we wanted to do it seriously in the future. We didn't keep any records, though ... counting gallons collected or quarts produced, which trees gave what when and so forth. We collected and boiled, ate and gave away as we worked, so who knows?

"Sugaring", as this process is called, is more than the production of a delicious treat, though it is certainly that. As the brief sugaring season moved along, I realized that I was experiencing a meditation in action.

There are basics: forty gallons of tree sap produce about a gallon of syrup, for example. And as sap approaches 219 degrees, one learns to be extremely careful. Then there's timing that fragile moment where sap becomes syrup but not candy. All of that is important, yes, but it's what I learned from the Earth that turned these few intense weeks in a mystical direction.

Our first attempts at tapping were on a lovely old grandfather maple just down the hill from our house. We weren't sure exactly how to do this; the minute Sr. Helena Marie drilled into the sapwood, the tree gave of its bounty. She ran up the hill and into the kitchen, shouting "It's running! It's running!!!!" Off we ran, spiles and containers in hand, to begin our sugaring education.

I was amazed, several days later, when we realized that in our rush the drill setting had slipped from forward to backward, making the subsequent holes really hard to make. Each hole is a small wound in the tree — one more opening in the bark that allows the sap to slip down the trunk and back into the ground. Drilling in reverse meant we were using only our strength to make those holes, not the natural power of the drill. Grandfather maple seemed to understand our enthusiasm and good intentions and did not close off the flow of precious sap, even as we burned into the bark around the holes.

It seemed to me that we had "wounded" the tree more than was necessary, adding heat to the cutting. Yet the natural abundance of Mother Earth showed itself once again through this old tree's generous sap flow.

That beautiful tree has taught us a lot: that we can make mistakes, sometimes hurtful ones, and be forgiven. That the nature of our planetary home is to be generous, to provide in profusion beyond imagination. That nothing is wasted, not even the sap that falls to the ground. That trees and rocks and bodies of water have a deep interiority — personality of their own.

Or, perhaps it is we who have a "treeality" of our own?

Preparing the first tap

In spite of a fairly deep snow cover, our first sugaring day was warm enough to work in shirtsleeves. Sr. HM rigged up a bit of electricity to power the drill and we were off and running. So was the sap, and our first season was on its way.

The perfect mapling day

It was a warm February afternoon when the first tap was drilled. As Sr. Helena Marie worked, I couldn't stop looking at the intricate lace-work of the bare tree branches above us. The quality of winter sun on a clear and dry day is extraordinary. When I stood in just the right place behind the Grandfather maple, the lovely image below demanded a quick photo.