'On Home'Why am I always starving on Wednesdays?
Perhaps it is because I know that the Vegetable Man comes to Ocracoke today, and will be setting up his booth of oh-so-delicious fresh fruit and veggies this very morning. Or perhaps it is a mid-week growth spurt of sorts. Whatever the reason, I begin the (eating part of the) day with a bowl of 'grits'.
For anyone new to this, grits are a real Southern food experience. I have taken to them in a big way. They are comfort food, 'suth-un stahl', but such a versatile food that grits can be eaten with any meal, at any time of day. For me, though, grits are for breakfast. A bit like cream of wheat, but more pebbly and corny. If ordered in a restaurant, grits will arrive with what looks and tastes like a pool of melted margarine on top of the white mound.
More appealing to me is a pool of maple syrup, (sort of north-meets-south in a bowl), and a splash of milk, just like having oatmeal or Red River cereal or cream of wheat back home.
Home.
The maple syrup is making me wistful.
Don't get me wrong. I'm happy that I have brought along my litre bottle of the delicious nectar.
But the taste. Oh my.
I dip out a teaspoonful of syrup, (Chester riveted, watching every move), pop the spoon in my mouth, close my eyes, slowly savour the flavour, roll it over my tongue.
I am back in Ontario in an instant.
It is a crisp spring day. The kind of day when you are too hot in winter garb, and too cool without. It is the kind of day for hoodies, bulky sweaters, mitts and toques. When there is still snow in the woods, and you need to keep moving to stay warm if you are not within a foot of the fire.
I am gathering sap, (at least, the buckets within about twenty paces of the sugar-house), and every ten minutes of so, feeding wood into the evaporator.
Doug is way way off in the easternmost part of the woods, and I can just hear the distant clang of the buckets as he replaces each one on its spile. The snow is still deep enough that you can follow the footprints from the previous day's gathering, like a treasure hunt taking you from tree to tree.
When the fire is good and hot and the sap is boiling hard in the pans, the air becomes sweet and moist, combining with woodsmoke and the scents of early spring in Ontario.
Scents of melting snow, and thawing earth, of rotting leaves and wood, and the first minute green shoots pushing skyward in dappled patches of sun.
So here I sit on Ocracoke Island, in the brightening morning of another blissfully warm southern summer-like day, thinking, (when I should be making art), of home, my beloved woods, my boy. And in spite of being in a t-shirt, denim skirt, flip-flops, in sun and heat and buzzing insects, contentedly enfolded in this place, I do miss home, and that slow gradual almost imperceptible shift into Spring which defines the North.
Chester and I decide that there is just time for one more bowl of grits and maple syrup before we see the Vegetable Man, and then, finally, settle down to work.
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