Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
There was something that felt honest to splitting wood. As Red Maple lifted each log onto the splitting block, he judged it and found its flaws, and by the time he’d hefted his splitting maul, he knew precisely where he needed to strike.
The process was almost automatic, and his mind went back through the years, to the spring where Sugar was carrying Maple in one of her pannier baskets and a jug of sap in the other. Back to the spring that Winter had first clumsily tipped foal-sized pails into the transfer cans on the sledge and spilled about half the sap, and he’d wanted to yell at her for wasting it but he held his tongue.
The first year that he and Sugar made syrup together, they’d slept in the saphouse; it had really been too much work for just the two of them, but he’d been too proud to ask for any help. They’d catnapped on the floor, and he’d gotten up countless times to keep the firebox full and keep sap in the boilers . . . that had been the year before Winter was born.
Even further back, when he’d been a colt himself, watching intently as Pappy showed him how to find the grain of the wood, how to strike it, and he thought he’d never be big enough to cleave the wood with one strike like Pappy did.
He cocked an ear up, listening to the weird gobbling call of sandhill cranes. Like the black-capped chickadees before them, they were finding their territory, coming back for the spring.
The season was nearing an end. Already, the maples with the most sun exposure had stopped producing sap and started to bud.
The north side of the saphouse was lined with jugs of sap that were ready for final reduction, filtering, and bottling.
Maple had really grown over the season. He’d struggled with the process the first day, but now he knew what was needed without any instruction. It was like he’d gone from a colt to a stallion in a little over a moon.
Once Red had put the freshly-split wood in the crib, he glanced into the saphouse. Maple was standing on the barrel, intently watching the sap, and he nodded. The process was coming naturally to his son, just like he’d hoped it would.
• • •
The road had gotten even muddier since his last trip. Even the snow he’d compacted with the roller had melted by now, and he paid close attention to all the soft spots. He didn’t want to get the sledge stuck in them when he brought it back to the barn.
He hesitated for a minute to survey the maple grove down the ridge. Pappy had planted all those trees the year before he and Sugar got married as an early wedding present, and this was the first spring they’d been harvested. They were still a little short, but their roots ran deep.
Off in the distance, he could faintly hear his wife and daughter talking, their voices nearly covering the occasional clunking and rattling of cans and pails as they worked. It was not unlike the birds reclaiming their territory.
He paused just for a moment at a rise in the land and watched them off in the distance, just as he’d watched Sugar work all those years ago. There had been a late snowstorm that year, and the two of them had huddled together in a small copse of pine trees and watched through the branches as the snow came down. For half a day the whole forest had been theirs.
Then Sugar saw him and waved, and he waved back before trotting down to meet them.
“That’s just about it for the season,” Sugar told him. “Another half the trees are going buddy.”
“How many does that leave us with?”
“A couple dozen,” Winter said.
“Just the ones over the ridge.”
He scraped a hoof on the ground, thinking. “Tomorrow afternoon, then, we’ll bring in the last of it. You two can work in the saphouse, getting everything ready to bottle, and then start heating up the last batch for the afternoon. Me and Maple’ll get the last of the sap and bring in all the rest of the buckets and spiles. Overmorrow, we’ll start reducing and bottling.”