Maple Nation

Everything Feels Like a Dream

I am sitting on an old telephone pole. It has been laying on the old road bed that runs along my parents’ field since time immemorial. My feet are stretched out into the snow. A passel of my young nieces and nephews slide down the hill. They call out to me “Stacey, look how far across the field I went!” “Stacey, did you see how fast my sled was?” “Stacey, watch me go down backwards!” “Stacey, I just want you to know I am like Shaggy; I am hungry all the time.” The sun shines on the far side of the field. The snow has all melted from that side. A row of tall pines behind me cast shadows over the hill, over the brush pile which the small ones think is a beaver lodge. It looks like one. It’s March. It’s cold in the shade.

I sip my coffee as it grows cold. I referee fights over whose turn it is on the good sled. I compliment them on their speedy slide or how far they went or their crazy way of sledding. A chipmunk has awaken from his long winter sleep. I hear him moving in the dry pine needles behind me. He climbs up on my telephone pole with me. He runs the length of it and disappears from sight. I think everything is a dream.

Desert sunshine, high plains and tall mountains seem like a book I have read. Did I once drive an Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway out of Taos, NM, up over snow covered passes? Did I stop at the first ever Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Angel Fire? Did I come to know of a father’s love there? A father who loved his son David? David who wondered, “If we are to stand on our feet in the presence of God, what, then, is one man that he should debase the dignity of another?” David who never made it home to see his beloved New Mexico again. David is remembered forever in Angel Fire.

Did I drive through high lonesome Eagles Nest, around the lake, down, down, the mountains through Cimarron Canyon, with its soaring cliffs and the Cimarron River keeping us company? Did I dream I saw lone figures fly fishing in the cold waters? Did we see the ghost trees, sad reminders of a massive, devastating wild fire? Did we get blown into the high plains, straight into the Texas panhandle. In my waking dream, when we switched driver, I had to use all my force to open the door into the wind. We stayed at a hotel in Pampa, Texas. It rained and hovered just above freezing as we drove through Oklahoma. We drove through the Potawatomi Nation. We thought about Braiding Sweetgrass. We dipped south in Arkansas.

We stay at my sister’s house. My niece, Julia, meets us in the driveway with several dogs at her feet. We share our new stories. We walk in the woods. Peanut Butter Pete and Jelly ride again, old friends who started long ago and far away in the stick season cold of a November in the north. Old friends who answered many names, sometimes we were cowboys: Peanut Butter Pete and Jelly, sometimes we were Julia and Stacey, sometimes we were Minky and Mamma-googy. We would exchange special rocks with wild tales of how we obtained them. We always brought each other snacks when we went hiking, one for me and one of you. We exchanged rocks in the wild prairies of South Dakota one year when we met in the middle to put a brother and an uncle to rest. In my dream, in Arkansas, we exchange rocks again. From my dreamy wild time of solitude in the mountains of Arizona, I give Julia fire agates and she gives me wild crystals. My niece, Sylvia, crafts me an earring out of one of the rocks I had found.

We talk about gnomes, about the times we’ve seen their signs. We argue about if Bigfoot has a chance to exist. I like a world best where Bigfoot is possible and gnomes are caught fishing the Deerfield river in Vermont. I tell her stories about far away and long ago. I tell her stories about how she used to be a super star in a house on a wooded knoll. I tell her stories about who we used to be. In my dream, she doesn’t have to remember anything concrete, only that I loved her for always. She only has to know in her bones that she was loved beyond measure in the far away and long ago. In my dream, she carries that feeling with her forever, fortifying her against whatever life might bring.

We cross the Mississippi River and my soul feels like a stone. We drive and drive and can’t seem to make any time. We Stay the night in Georgia, with my niece and her new husband. We act like we have never seen civilization as we try to navigate her gated community. We eat good food and meet good cats. We feel comfortable and at ease. We feel loved. We laugh. We talk about the nothings. We talk about significant things. I go out on the balcony early in the morning. I listen to the birds singing. I feel happy to have place to picture my Shanna and that she can listen to a riot of birds’ song in the mornings. I am blessed beyond measure in a multitude of ways, but maintaining relationships with young adults is one of the best blessings. I am lucky to be welcomed here. I am thankful to be at ease here. I am happy to have known her all these years, to get to see who she has and will become. I am the lucky one.

In my dreamy haze, we cross over into South Carolina. We stay with my sister and family for a week. We hike. We talk. We play word games. We watch birds. We go deep into the woods looking for vernal pools. We find some. We search it for new life. We find jelly like eggs. We are a week or two too early for the swimming young. We hike along a beautiful river. Savanna catches a lizard. We spend time. We weave more threads into our tapestry of life, into our ties that bind. Savanna and I have our running inside jokes from since she was a baby. We laugh. We take turns writing lines of poetry. We get good coffee. We make and eat good food. We scour the yard for first daffodils. We find one on a cold and rainy day. I try to hold all the moments. I don’t know when I will come this way again. I don’t want the time to get away. I don’t want to close my eyes and Savanna is grown and I missed all the days. I try to hold all the moments. I won’t have the freedom or the time to come and go on the breeze. I try to hold all the moments. There’s a cold moving through my bones. I don’t want the days to get away.

We drive into North Carolina. We sit in traffic in Charlotte. We sigh in relief when we turn onto the gravel road which ends at Tranquility. We spend the night with my sister, Eve. We visit with my niece and nephew. We eat good food. We talk about all that is sacred and holy. We laugh and we cry. We hope the best for me. I feel loved. I feel blessed. I feel the cold biting at the edges of all things. I hope I can drive this gravel road again. I hope I can find Tranquility at the end.

We head north. We can’t settle into the drive. We find snow in the high places in Virginia. I can’t find a comfortable way to sit. We get a hotel south of Scranton, PA. It’s cold. The wind whips through me. I don’t know how I can tolerate this cold. It’s so fucking cold. We drive on in the morning, in the cold, in the wind. We sit in traffic in Hartford, CT, the way we always do. We arrive at my parents’ house. The snow is heaping around the house and yard. The wind howls. The cold bites. It’s so very cold. The house is warm, a happy fire going. Nobody is home. I dig out my puffy coat. I find my gloves. The wind roars. Life is better in a coat. Within a half hour of being home, I am down in the basement with my dad fixing a leaking water pipe. My dad says there is a trace of acid in the well water so after 60 years it eats pin holes through the copper and brass pipes. We fix the leak. The next day, we climb up on the out building roofs. We shovel several tons of snow off them, me and my old, old dad.

Back in the warm house, my dad tells my mom that I work like a machine. The buildings will stand another year, relieved of the great weight of snow.

Spring comes. We hang buckets on the maple trees. We clean the sugar house. We snowshoe through the snow to collect the sap. The snow melts slowly. The buckets are now high above our heads when before with the snow levels they were waist high. One day while collecting saps, with my two five gallon buckets full, as I was heading back to the farm truck to empty my buckets in the tank and not wearing snow shoes, one of my legs broke through the top crust and sunk up to my waist. This is not a good position to get out of with full buckets of sap, the weight of which totals 82 lbs. You’ll have to picture the gracefulness of one leg fully up on the crust of the snow and the other leg sunk to the hips. I did manage to free myself without spilling any sap, but it was delicate and complicated extraction. My nephew who is not old enough for school always come to help. He talks non stop and my dad has two small buckets for the small friends to use. He calls the sugar house the snack shed. He is a member of maple nation.

The climate in New England is changing. New maple saplings are not surviving. Even the season has pushed early into the year and is shorter in duration. I think about this while I am collecting sap, enjoying the physical labor, the long walks through the woods to the farm truck with full heavy buckets. I think about how much of a loss it will be to New England when the maples move north as climate refugees. It will be a great toll on the economies of New Hampshire and Vermont, the loss of sugar season and the loss of leaf peeping dollars in the fall. It’s maples that set our world afire. Will these days only live in a memory for my small nephew. He is the fourth generation of maple syrup makers in my family’s sugar shack. I don’t know if it will be possible for there to be a fifth. We are members of Maple Nation, and we would like to speak up for the trees so they don’t have be climate refugees.

I am sitting on a telephone pole. I am watching the future slide down the snow that clings to this hill, protected from the warming sun by a row of tall pines. I think the warm desert and nomadic four years I had seem like a dream, a story my head made up to entertain me. I listen to them talk about wild things. I hear them say “Stacey will protect us.” They are talking about coyotes. My legs are stretched out before me, my boots in the snow. My coffee is cold. I drink it anyway. I watch the future laugh as they sail down the hill, going so far their sleds reach the sunny part of the field where there is grass and no snow. I pull my on hood. I watch the future.

I hope we leave you a place you can laugh in. I hope we leave you a country, a planet you can breathe in. I will protect you, always.

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