Scott Carrino closed up the sugar house at Pompanuck Farm today, he covered up the vats and bins and jarred the last dozen or so Grade B jars of syrup. He said it was a good season. I can’t even imagine going to the trouble of having a sugar house, I know syrup is a lucrative industry up where I live, but it is also complex and difficult. Hundreds of taps are set in trees, mules of tubes, medieval vats and bins and boiling tanks. Good syrup is a science, and I enjoyed learning about it.

It’s getting warm, the sap is not running any more. Scott said it was a good year, he got about 30 gallons of syrup from his taps. I can testify that is a lot of work. The inside of the sugar house looked like Merlin’s secret laboratory to me.

More than that, I enjoyed talking to Scott in the dark and steaming room with Red, and sometimes Fate. Red takes to the sugar house, he curls up in a corner and goes to sleep. Ed Gulley’s “Mr. Blockhead” looks at  home in front of the sugar house, it was a gift to Scott.

The sugar house has a bit of an emotional charge for me, it is a place where men seemed to talk freely, in my experience they rarely make time to talk to one another in private and for any length of time. The last time he visited, Paul Moshimer came with me to the Sugar House, the three of us had a wonderful evening sipping Hot Toddies and talking. Paul joined our Fabulous Old Men’s Club, and we are still feeling his loss.

The next morning, Paul and I went to Vermont to bring a blind rescue horse back to Blue Star Equiculture, he killed himself shortly after that night.

Scott and I do not dwell in the past, we have moved on, we are making our own history, telling our own stories.  We have built a lot of good and warm and rich memories in that house.

We have tipped a glass to Paul, to one another.  Explained the past, imagined the future we both want for ourselves. It is an intimate place, perfectly built for connection. I’ll miss it.

The sugar house will be closed and locked up until next Spring, where, hopefully, Red and Scott and I will be sitting near the boiling vats, sipping our hot toddies, sharing the adventure that is our lives. It is good to have a brother.

In the meantime, the sugar house has richly added to my experience here, a radioactive seed of memory, a special place. Life is marked by crisis and mystery.