"Dusk, you know. Real things seem thinner then, at least to me." - from Stephen King's You Like It Darker
Sugar season this year went out with a bang – that is, I kicked the week-old, overflowing sap buckets over and watched 110 gallons of spoiling sap spill into the snowy mud. Happy spring. I was over sugaring, anyway. It’s a lot of work on an old, beat-up rig and I spent more time wishing I could just stick my head into the firebox.
Early April brought an epic snowstorm to our area. And with epic wet weather comes epic overtime at my utility company job. I was assigned a night shift – two pm ‘til six am– to assist crews with getting the power back on around the Lakes Region. The night shift didn’t bother me as I’d hardly been sleeping for a month – I boil ‘til midnight almost every night during the season. We can sleep in spring, we hearty Yankees grumble while we pour some hot sap into our coffee and stare at the moon like it’s gonna blink first.
It was the tail end of sugar season, a last gasp of sap, niter, and sucrose. The kinda sap that has moths floating in it. I had no idea how many nights I’d be working so I just let the buckets fill while I focused on my primary income generator. I hoped I'd get a chance to boil it. I’d get home at six am or so and let out the chickens and the sheep. “Good morning, ladies,” I’d say, then “Good night.” I’d let the dogs out, feed them breakfast, then I’d sleep for five hours and drive back down to Tilton, where I’d sling out transformers and wire like there wasn't any installed in the first place.
One morning I came home and let the dogs out. We played a little in a snow flurry (they sure missed me) and I took some video of Wilder and Pip doing dolphin dives in the deep snow. Midway through the video, I stop panning and can be heard saying to the boys, “Let’s go. NOW.” The video ends.
There was a huge moose standing ten feet away from us at the edge of the sugar bush. The trees were completely caked in white fluff, the entire forest a fifty foot high pile of bones, and she stood there, its brown beating heart. Once the dogs were safe inside, I plodded back out to get another look but the moose was gone, her tracks already half-covered by the falling snow. I still wonder if I imagined it, some nor’east ghost haunting me from the gateway of madness.
Everyone had their power back on by the morning of the solar eclipse – which was good because thousands of people were heading northbound to get a peek (or lack, thereof) of the total eclipse north of Lancaster. Since I had worked until six am, I was given the day off to relax and come back at my normal time the next morning. So I woke up ‘round noon and lazily sauntered the farm. Kay and our neighbor Sarah brought me a sandwich from Boro. The warmth of spring, while about to disappear, felt good in the moment.
We set up lawn chairs right by the godforsaken evaporator and watched the world turn hazy. The sheep and chickens hushed, Wilder and Pip followed me close and were calm and trusting that I knew what was going on. We explored the silver air, we felt the dimensions clashing. I thought maybe I could find my moose if I looked hard enough, or perhaps it’s moose-sized rabbit hole, but we never did. There was no wardrobe, no lonely street lamp in the woods, no witch to offer me Turkish Delights. Just the Sandwich Range turning dark and cold in total silence. But the sun came back and the chickens clucked and the sheep remembered I was home and started begging me for their afternoon nuzzle scratches and corn snacks. Life went on.
A week later, sap gone and forgotten, taps pulled, garden seedlings on my mind, I went for a run up Mt. Israel Road at dusk. The storm of the week before had completely melted away and it was springtime, fast and furious. I had my headlamp with me, but didn’t plan on using it, as the moon was big and bright and ready to guide me down Maple Ridge. Before I could get far into the great north woods of Sandwich, however, I was stopped by a large shadow, quiet and strong, a knobby-kneed, dopey-eared apparition. My moose stared at me from the middle of the road, right where it turns from pavement to dirt. She stared at me. Almost carelessly, but with intent. I stood still and smiled and….just stood. “Hey, you” I said. She got the hint and walked to the brush and into the woods. As the crow flies (or hikes, if you know the Bearcamp Trail) we really weren’t very far from the woods behind our farm. I knew, she knew. She wanted me to know she knew.
I, as a farmer, a writer, a hit-the-trails nature boy with two very inquisitive trouble-making Aussies, spend a lot of time standing around observing. It’s the only way to learn anything. I don’t pretend to know if there’s a God or not – I’ll figure all that out as I go – but sometimes there’s something. It feels like there’s a billowy curtain in the breeze of dusk. Sometimes we slip through and sometimes they slip through. There’s magic and power and something that feels alive and distinctly of this earth, but in a way we can’t understand. Like there’s another thread of the earth tucked alongside this one and together they all create this tapestry we all exist within.
You can find it on the edge – the edge of forests, the edge of the storm, the edge of the day, the slivery edge of the sun. I remember daily that the most life in an ecosystem also lives on the edge: go fishing and find your fish in the coves and weeds along the shore; you see the deer and grouse and brambles filled with fruit where the forest spills into the meadow. And I am just about convinced I only get good ideas on the farm when I’m on the edge of my sanity. Which is why I am constantly finding edges to explore.
Seek the edge, and tell me what you find.
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