Little House on the Wasteland

Twenty-Three: When the Sap Rises

It was a cold night. The elevation, that was part of it. The Great Eighty Road had sloped upwards all day, gently but steadily, and Laura supposed that they were camped higher up than they had been for some time. Even so, no one seemed prepared for the sudden chill. Ever since Badger Creek, the nights had been unseasonably warm, so warm that Laura had found herself kicking aside the last of her blankets and sleeping uncovered beneath the night air.

That night, even beneath her blankets, she shivered. In the morning, she could see her breath, and, on the tips of the cedar branches that hung down low beside her bedroll, she saw that a thin dusting of frost had turned their needles pale. In the dawn twilight, as Mr. Chavez prepared a breakfast porridge and everyone readied their cargo for the day's journey, gloves and long-folded coats came back out from wherever they'd been tucked away.

Yet, once the sun was well and up, staring down at the convoy as they resumed their journey westward, the spring warmth returned. Soon, coats were shed once more and stowed again right back where they came from.

"I ain't ever seen weather so fickle," Bill Keo complained, as he stopped by the side of the road to stuff his outer garment into his carrysack. "Reminds me of a girl I knew back in New Hewston. Engaged to be married, we were. Then one day out of the blue she tells me, 'Bill I can't be with you. I aim to take vows and devote my life to Jesus.' Then, not six months later, I find out she and her roommate from sem'nary have run off together. I told you that story yet, Ingalls?"

Pa had stopped nearby to shrug off his own coat. He regarded the cloudless sky thoughtfully.

"'The sap is rising.' That's what my Uncle Freddie used to say when we'd get weather like this up in the Wisconsin. When the days get warm but the nights are still cold. That's the time to tap the sugar maples. Barely have to drive your spile in past the bark on a morning like this, and out she comes like a canoe that's sprung a leak. Golden brown and sweet as any cane sugar."

Pa folded his coat across his arm and walked to the back of the handcar to find a place to tuck it inside the cargo box. Laura watched him and thought of last spring, when she had helped Pa tap the sugar maples that grew in the Big Woods. Suddenly, she was homesick.

Pa had showed her how to hammer the hollow iron tapper into the tree trunk. She remembered sitting and watching the brown sap rise up out of the tree as if by magic. The liquid would gather along the tapper and then come drip-dripping down into their waiting bucket. Pa explained that the maples had been storing their sap down in their roots all winter. Now the tree could feel the seasons changing, and it was pushing the sweet lifeblood upwards, up through its tall trunk, all the way up into its branches to help make new leaves and buds and start a brand new cycle of rebirth and decline.

Ma made syrup from the sap and hard maple candy. Laura scanned the Yowa countryside that rolled along beside the Eighty Road. Looking back in the direction from which they'd come, the hillside was spotted with the prickly shapes of cedars. In the distance ahead, she saw a grove of squat and spindly trees that she did not recognize. The taste of maple candy was on her tongue now, as real and immediate as if she had just popped a piece into her mouth. The flavor was unmistakable, sweet but also burnt and earthy, the flavor of the Big Woods. She wondered if she would ever taste that taste again.

***

The weather grew even warmer as the day wore on and the convoy continued westward.

At one point, Laura heard Devonte quarreling again with his mother. Laura looked back and saw with surprise that the boy had stripped off his tunic. He stalked down the road bare-chested, the ink cross beneath his collarbone on prominent display. Ms. Aguilar walked beside him, quietly berating him to put his clothes back on, but Devonte exploded at her, yelling that the tunic was too hot and itchy.