There are days when I am powerfully reminded of why I love to live where I live, and the first day of sugaring, the boiling and steaming and making of maple syrup is one of them. I am privileged to have been invited to Scott Carino’s cozy little sugar house, I brought Red who is welcome there. The wind and cold was powerful, the wind was roaring through the woods and it was freezing. It was warm inside, the smell of the sap in the vaporizer deep and sweet.

Inside the sugar house there was an afternoon of work, steam, sweet smells, tubes, pipes, boiling cauldrons, levers and fires, a medieval processes coupled with true friendship. Scott loves the old ways of doing it, he disdains the more modern and efficient systems, he goes by feel and smell and taste. He hops from bucket to tube to vaporizer to cauldron and vat, pulling levers, cackling and muttering like a sorcerer.

Scott and I have achieved that rare thing among men, true and lasting and trusting friendship. We sat for hours and helped prepare the first round of sugaring, as it is called. I admit it, the Sugar House is a man cave – no women there day – we sat talking, laughing, stoking fires and checking on vats and in between sipping from some delicious hot toddies, whiskey and maple syrup. A great drink on a cold winter afternoon.

I can talk to Scott, he is not put off by me and my ways, and I accept his passionate and idiosyncratic personality. We are both outsiders who spent many years figuring out where we belonged, for both of us, it was his Sugar House this afternoon. Red curled up near the fire and was still, except for when the wind roared and shook the building, that made him nervous.

I have not had a lot of lasting friendships with men, it is something I was not able to do. I think that has changed, along with so many other things in my life. Men do not make friends easily or keep them long, as a rule. Sociologists say that is because men put work and responsibility above friendship, they rarely make room for it.

I have made room for my friendship with Scott, he has made room for me. Really, that’s all it takes for us. We demand nothing from one another but truth and connection.

This was a wonderful day to spend an afternoon, by a roaring fire in a sugar house on a cold and windy day, dog underfoot, friend a few feet away.  We talked about work, drank our toddies, exchanged feelings about our life and our ambitions for the next chapter in our lives.

The world always seems a brighter place if you turn off the news, put work and obligations aside, and hang out with a good friend. I hope I always make room for that, I expect to be back in Scott’s Sugar House later on when it warms up.