It’s been quite a busy stretch these past few weeks with maple syrup season occupying most of my time it seems. We ended up having a successful season despite the up and down weather swings.The reserve taps really paid off and allowed us to maintain an average sap intake right up to the end. We finished our season with the sugar house woodshed almost empty and now in need of a refill. Much of the cleanup has been completed as of this past week so that’s always a relief. Zane and I washed 400 plus buckets in a couple days just one week ago. The evaporator becomes a giant water heater once all the sap is removed from it and supplies all the bucket washing water we need. It’s a boring job that we made better by playing music on a Bluetooth speaker. We enjoyed simple conversations and I told stories about random events that had occurred many years ago. Certain words would trigger song titles and bands. A quick trip to U-tube would bring back songs that I rarely heard anymore but had never forgotten. Zane enjoyed the songs of Nazareth,Thin Lizzy, and Rush just to name a few. The passage of time has not diminished my love of music nor kept me confined to one time period. These days I have evolved into a roving listener of heavy rock sounds coupled with thought provoking rhyming lyrics. I can change stations at will in my vehicles where Siris satellite radio can be replaced by Pandora with ease. Am and Fm radio has been forgotten in my desire to never hear commercials or news broadcasts. Who needs to listen to the weather when it’s only a key stroke away? Why ever listen to the same repetitive music when there are so many new and intriguing songs to sample? I find myself drawn to the indie rock artists quite frequently and really branch out into some new horizons. Music has changed over the years but what has truly changed are my methods of accessing and listening to it. Gone are the portable Am/Fm radios of my youth. Gone are the days of cumbersome portable music players. Gone now the 8-track tapes and cassettes. As are the CDs.We used to lug our players everywhere. I was telling Zane about taking our portable 8-track players on camping trips when I was a teenager. They required the large D cell batteries to power them. On cold nights they drained quickly and we were sometimes forced to place our players close to the campfire to keep them going. This led to some being slightly melted as you might suspect. Fast forward. ( there’s a term for you! ) On the side of our old sugar house there is a simple shelf constructed years ago. It once held the antenna for my portable satellite radio unit. The hours of boiling sap were made more pleasant with the commercial free tunes echoing throughout the sugar house. An inverter connected to an old tractor battery kept it powered and also powered the lighting. I no longer rely on a portable satellite radio unit. These days I use my phone to sync up to a Bluetooth speaker to supply the music when boiling sap. Silence is fine at times in the sugar house with the only music coming from the boiling sap,rising steam clouds, and the crackling of the fire under the evaporator pans.Why such focus on music? Music helps pass the time away when faced with menial task. It can set the pace and fuel the energy. I once enjoyed playing music on the numerous construction sites where I spent much of my time. These days the project managers prohibit music on the job most of the time. Their reasons are flat and rather foolish quite honestly. The ear splitting cacophony of a construction site is far worse than some of the screaming heavy rock I enjoy in my opinion. Good thing I am mostly retired these days. I’d need to go rogue and play my music somehow. About 12 years ago I was working on a barracks project at Fort Drum. Music of any kind was forbidden even ear buds. The repetitious work I was doing forced me to thwart their rules however. I rigged up my tiny iPod in my hard hat and hid my ear bud wire in my hoodie. I was never caught and enjoyed the simple pleasures of music at work. Yesterday I was faced with a long day on the highway. Twelve hours of towing a U-haul to West Virginia. Satellite radio ruled the day once again. I was all over the map in so many ways. But the miles passed behind in a soundtrack of success. The trailer was delivered safely and the objective was completed. The music played the entire time during the trip. There are times when nature plays the ultimate soundtrack. Crying loons and the nighttime chorus of frogs. The crickets of late August as yet another summer speeds onward. The lapping of waves and the wind in the pines above the tent in some remote destination. One doesn’t need the man made music in those moments.I explained once to Zane about the song writer’s potential dilemma. The songwriter has but a few short minutes to tell a story or make their message clear. The writer of novels has much more time. As does the blogger. I can follow my forward progress of gathered years through memory and deed. I can accompany those memories with music from living and listening during those gathered years. I seek to be the creator of lasting impressions. From these short sentences can the reader connect and begin to create their own soundtrack of life? The magic of the rhyming stories that I so love to write (when they show themselves to me)has always been inspired by music and simple lyrics. There is no rhyme nor reason this particular April day. Only the desire to move forward and complete the tasks before me. Short and sweet as they say. It’s MOONTABS In Motion here in West Virginia for a time.
