As with the maple trees each year, I find myself tapped out. I had thought I could sustain a series on maple syrup for the entire month of March. And while I have a lot of good syrup-related photographs I could share, I’ve run out of words to accompany them.
So, to borrow a word that’s become overused during the pandemic, I’m going to pivot. For the balance of the month, I will feature photographs of Williams Farm, the property that appears in all my earlier maple syrup photos. But these photos will treat non-syrup concerns. After all, the sap runs for only a few weeks each year. Things don’t suddenly stop the instant the last sap is boiled.
The first of my pivot images is a variation on an old theme. Visual artists love to play with the way trees cast shadows across the snow. I’ve seen paintings, woodcut prints, and of course photographs that explore the almost abstract variation of light and dark that bare trees produce in the winter time. However, I’ve always felt there is something missing from these images. There are no sap lines running from tree to tree. The sap lines produce a gossamer web through the forest that catches the early morning light.
