At a rest stop where we park to stretch our legs and use the facilities, she is pacing back and forth on the sere, dun-colored grass that has gone dormant from drought. The phone is still glued to her ear and her flip-flops kick up dust in her wake.

I wander along the walkway of the rest stop. It’s a pleasant spot, insulated from the noise of the interstate by a stand of thick trees, evergreens and sugar maples that are just getting ready to take on their fall colors.

The local historical society in this area has a craft booth set up at the rest stop, and I buy a bottle of amber maple syrup from a woman in a homespun apron and—I kid you not—a poke bonnet. The clear glass bottle is in the shape of a maple leaf, and when I hold it up to the sun, it sparkles like a jewel.

According to the information flyer that came with the syrup, the maple trees will put on a dazzling display of fall color. These country roads will soon be crowded with RVs and busloads of leaf-lookers, coming to enjoy the scenery so beautiful that it attracts tourists from the world over to view them each year. After the riot of color, the trees lose all their leaves and appear to die.

Yet it is then, in the dead of winter, that the maples are most productive. If you tap deep enough into the tree, sinking a metal tube into its most hidden heart, you’ll discover a gush of life.

The sap is drained through the tube, collected in covered buckets and boiled in huge vats to make maple syrup.

Who the heck thought of that? I wonder. At some moment in the unremembered past, someone walked up to a leafless maple tree, hammered a tube into its center, harvested the sap and rendered it into sweet syrup. What a random thing to do.

One thing I’d guess—whoever thought it up wasn’t a college graduate. She—I’m quite certain it was a she—was probably a mother. An ancient Algonquin desperate housewife. At the end of a long winter, her kids were probably bored and cranky from being cooped up in the longhouse, chasing each other and driving her crazy with their noise. They had no idea supplies had run low, that the men hadn’t done too well on the latest hunt. Pretty soon, the kids’ war whoops and giggles would turn to whining. Yelling at the older kids to keep the younger ones away from the fire, the woman strapped on snowshoes made of hide, with gut laces, and trudged out into the deadening cold to look for food.

How did she know about the secret inside the maple tree? Maybe the deer clued her in. During the starving season, the hungry animals stripped the bark from the trees as high as they could reach. Maybe the woman, her vision sharpened by desperation, noticed the glistening ooze from the flesh of the trees. Maybe she touched a finger to the sticky dampness, tasted a faint sweetness on her tongue. And the rest was history. An industry was born. The hunting party came home with their limp, skinny rabbit to find the women and children feasting on boiled cornmeal, magically sweetened with an elixir from the sugar maples.