Today, I should be writing the next installment in my series On Being Fat. (I promise that the next installment will be coming soon.) Instead, I’m going to write about maple syrup. I just can’t help myself. I am so keen on maple syrup that even the merest hint that the season is about to begin sends me into a fever of anticipation. I love the whole process—the tapping of the trees, the boiling of the sap, the great wood fires, the steam, and finally, the glorious substance itself—maple syrup, which can also be made into sugar or a soft spread to be used on toast. (My mouth is watering as I write this.)

I’m not the only one who loves maple syrup. There are a couple of sugar shacks in the area, and when the season is in full swing, those shacks are packed on weekends.

As it happens, there is a sugar shack—Mike’s Maple House—not far from our house, probably not more than three miles away. Yesterday, as I was taking the dog for a walk, I saw a man hauling logs out of the woods, and they came from a dead tree he had just cut up. It was Mike Smith, owner of Mike’s Maple House, and his face was very red from the exertion of pulling the logs with tongs through the snow.

Naturally, I stopped to talk with him. “That’s a lot of work.”

“It is,” he said, wiping his sweating face. “But I’m about done and am ready to throw the wood into my truck.”

I nodded, seeing the truck parked a little ways down the road. “Looks like pretty good wood.”

“Yup,” he replied.  “Three weeks in a shed or a barn, and it will be ready to burn. I don’t dare leave it here until tomorrow. I’m afraid someone will take it.”

“I can see your point. Do you use it to heat your house?”

“No, this is for making maple syrup.”

Ah, maple syrup! Beside me, the dog sat down and resigned himself to waiting until the conversation was over and the walk would resume.

Mike continued, “The season’s coming right up. Hope it’s as good this year as it was last year. I actually ran out of wood to boil the sap. But who knows how it will be? It’s been such a weird fall and winter.”

Yes, it has.

Then Mike went on to tell me a couple of maple syrup stories. “One year, someone drove by, saw flames shooting into the sky from my sugar house, and called the fire department. Must have been somebody new to the area who didn’t know me. When the fire department came, they told me they figured it was just me. You should have called me first, I told them, before coming out here.”

Indeed they should have.

“Lots of new people on this road and a lot more traffic, too. When I first moved here, I could let my children take oxen down the road to haul wood out of the forest. Wouldn’t do that today. Too much traffic.”

He is certainly right about that. The dog and I have to constantly watch for oncoming cars, and occasionally, we even have to stop and move over if one seems to be coming too fast and too close.

“Well,” I said, “I’d best be on my way. But I’ll be seeing you soon. In the next month or so?”

“I hope so,” Mike said.

The dog and I continued our walk. The sky, which had been gray when we started out, began to clear, the cloud cover rolling back like a receding tide, leaving blue sky in its wake rather than a sandy beach. A dusting of snow covered the evergreens and the bare branches of the trees, and as the sun emerged, the branches glittered and sparkled.

“It looks like a fairyland,” I fancifully told myself.

But thoughts of maple syrup quickly returned to replace thoughts of fairyland. On my way back, I saw that Mike had loaded the wood into his truck, and he waved to me as he went by. I waved back. Maple syrup season is almost here. And I can’t wait.