Early morning glistens with ice, but as the day progresses the snow cover sags under the warming sun. It’s maple season, the time of year that sap rises up the maple trees and people are busy tapping into the sweet bounty.

We allowed a neighbor to tap our trees the first year we lived on the land. I regretted it when as he drove around during the mud season in an ATV, compacting the soil. Fortunately this was in a part of the forest with few spring wildflowers. Still, there are plenty of maples in this region which grew up in the open, in old pastures or as borders, while our maple trees have had to compete for resources and therefore are less productive.

Those of us that have the luxury of not living hand-to-mouth have the opportunity to cultivate relationships with the nonhuman world not based on economics. I want to be able to appreciate the forest for its own sake, not for what it provides people. So while I put a lot of energy into gardening on previously cultivated land, it’s hard for me to justify wild harvest. The natural world is under siege from all sides. I don’t want to be a force of destruction in the place I love so much, or to take more than I give back. Since that first year, the maples in our forest have kept their sugars to make leaves, flowers, and samaras, feeding fungi, insects, birds and rodents.