In Like a Lion

What they say about March, here where I live, is "in like a lion". March comes in cold. The ground is about as frozen as it will get. The jet stream is still shifted well south. It's cold and I am about as beaten down by winter as I'll get.

Here in New England, though, deep in the ground the roots of the maples are starting to pump. A week ago I was having breakfast with a young lady I'd taken a fancy to and looking over her shoulder to the branches high above the courthouse lawn I could see a gray squirrel nibbling on the buds.

For me winter ends when I ride my motorcycle to a sugar house to have breakfast. Between Delaware and Quebec, between Boston and Duluth is where all the maple syrup in the world comes from. The frogs up north square dance but we make pancakes to celebrate.

For about 15 years now the first "long" ride of the season for me is to sugar house. Even with an electric vest and a one piece Roadcrafter I am cold. I park in the gravel lot, my bike blue gray with road salt. On the ride over I am unsure and shy from a winter of huddling. The sand and mud on the road do not help.

But I arrive and rush to the boiler where the sap is condensed to syrup. I warm myself with fresh cider doughnuts and coffee. That day, not come yet this year, is the first day of spring.

There is something ritual about this plan of mine, enacted new every year but never repeated. I am always unsteady, unsure. It would be simpler, safer, saner, to take the car. I feel, illogically, that I must. There is, at first, the grudging inevitability. It will be uncomfortable.

But once in motion, even if I am very cold, I fall into the rythum of riding that all the winters reading cannot even hint at. I am less cheated by layers of comfort, I am cold because it is cold out. I am thrilled by my own tenuousness and caution.

This day approaches and it will be easier, to take the car. I will not. Like a gnat that sometimes inexplicably appears above the snow, small and vulnerable, I will end winter.