On an early-morning amble through the decommissioned shale pit near our house today, I noticed a cloudly icicle hanging from the cut end of a tree. The maskwi (white birch) had toppled over sometime last year and I cut it in the winter so I could use the path. I didn’t bother severing the trunk from the ground, so it was still alive. The temperatures had fallen to -5C overnight, so the sap that was rising froze as it dripped.

I broke off a piece and popped it in my mouth, and there was the faintest sweetness there. Collect enough and boil it down and a sweet syrup can be created.

I have never seen this before, a sapicle. I’ve seen lots of maskwi stumps, but it must have been the angle that the trunk was leaning that allowed this sweet phenomenon to occur.

Every time I go for a walk in the forest next to our house, I see something new. Every time. You might think that’s an exaggeration, that I can still find something new here after 60 years, but I do, and it still surprises me. Something as simple as some dripping sap can connect me to the gifts of the earth and the power of the sun and the magic of walking slowly and looking with newly-opened morning eyes.