Scott’s sugar house has a medieval feeling about it, bubbling and hissing pans, tubes and tubs, smells and sounds, steam fire, toil and trouble. I can picture Merlin holed up making potions, turning angry men into wisps of smoke, or worse. Scott takes his sugaring seriously, he does it in the old tradition, he is contemptuous of the fancy new machines that make it easier and cheaper but seem to take some of the old flavor out of it.

He and Paul talked about the physics of water, boiling temperatures, processes and machines – a place I cannot go. Why is it, I wonder, that I never seem to understand the things most men  love to talk about. Red showed me once again that he can fit in graciously anywhere, even a room crammed with roaring fires, steam and people. Scott is in his element in the sugar house, he loves it and is very good at it.