The sap rises in the maple each spring after the squeeze and release, squeeze and release of winter.… Bodies, light, sap, our language.… Would God put himself into the body of a man if what he wanted was to escape the body?(2)

Winter is forgetting.

January’s northwest wind blows feet of snow in drifts and eddies along the rock wall, covering last fall’s leaves. The days are getting longer in New Hampshire, but the nights are getting colder. Even the stones contract and clench, defending against the sharp air.

We light a fire, and bank it with split ash and dry oak. In the evening, in the orange glow of hot coals, we try to remember, but the memory remains out of reach, buried, frozen. We sleep through the January moon, whose light turns the white snow blue. 

In early February the wind calms, and the sun thaws the ice along the granite wall near the sugar maple. Snow trapped in the old tree for weeks, a white patch in the saddle between trunk and limb, melts and falls at last, drops of water holding light.

It’s time again. The sap is rising.

I put on my hat, boots, and gloves. In the barn I get my drill and my hammer; buckets and taps; the pan and the stove.

The steel drill penetrates the scaly bark of the old sugar maple. The sharp edge of the bit finds purchase, digs in, pulls deeper. Wet sugar maple flesh, soaked in sap, flies from the drill and spatters on the snow, tan tailings the colour of bread. Before I can put the drill down and pick up the hammer and tap, sap gathers at the rim of the hole, swells, expands, and then releases like a held breath, overflows in a tiny torrent, a stream, and drips down the craggy bark like oil down an old man’s beard.