Families Collecting Maple Sap

Metal buckets hang from tapped maple trunks along a snowy forest path, collecting sap in a landscape still patched with melting snow and early spring flowers. A family carries full pails and woven baskets toward a wooden sugarhouse, where smoke rises from a stone chimney and firelight glows through the open boiling shed. Children run ahead with buckets of their own, while an older couple follows more slowly along the worn path. A stream curves through the valley behind the cabin, and rolling hills fade into a pink and orange sunset sky. White and yellow wildflowers push up through patches of bare ground near the tree roots, and fallen leaves cover much of the forest floor. Each hanging bucket marks its own tree along the path, spaced out like stations on the way to the fire.