One taste,one boil.

Ken Wilbur wrote an elegy to life in his book One Taste.  I harken back to his struggles as I wrestle my own ego while the season evaporates where sap should.  The core of his meditations surround the battle his wife is waging against terminal illness with him as primary care provider.  A contemporaneous guru of self with-it-ness, he finds himself at the bottom of a wine bottle; I remember white over red.   Breath in.   Breath out.

The core of my affliction is that I wrote a down payment, a day after the remembrance of American emancipation, on a promise that an apparatus of tax abatement along with its attendant components would arrive in my mantle stocking.  My maternal grandmother raises a dram to Hogmanay, yet I see hide nor hare, let alone word about my investment.  A call days later results in an update that January is to be my redemption.  Colour me stressed when Valentine's finds me equipped minus the filter that will make my product, "look like glass," yet still responsible for writing a check for the net amount.

You can not reduce a solution of tree blood which is at optimal 2% sugar and 97 odd percent water to be sediment free.  Nitres have always been present in natural maple syrup.  The extent to which you have been cognizant of them depends on the purity of your producer, and the observationalism of your purchases.  What is that you say, how can I see my product when it is encapsulated in entirely opaque plastique?

You could inspect it if swaddled in glass.  Fine Italian glass at that.  Which I also have a pallet of.  Purchased from the purveyor of the arch.  But I digress.  Before you can boil, you must brick or insulate your evaporator; along with the myriad of logistical hoops one must salve before collecting sap to reduce.   Amongst our weaponry (read laundry list) includes having a place to clean all your components, final placement of stainless steel tanks to collect your sap because of impending regulations, a canning station to place 66.9% brix syrup into a jar, fear, surprise, a fanatical devotion to the pope…..

Breath in.

Breath out.

One Boil…

Can I get it?

Several things today might be a balm to my anxiety.  According to the syrup guru from Vermont, March is to arrive cold and unrepentant.  The subtext here being that the season will be long.  Is that not what we all seek from life, despite its seemingly Jobian recidivism?  If I can survive this round of destruction, one boil will be a bounty.  Stay tuned.  Same bat time.   Same bat channel.