April 11, 2025
Day 1,288 of the Adventure
Occasionally, I'll have a flashback of something that occurred decades ago. Things that happened when I was a kid that I really have no explanation why I would be remembering now in my mid 60's. Some of these memories, I suppose, shaped my life-view on how I see things today. Buried within some of those memories, are my experiences with "hard times". My parents were both children of the Great Depression. They did their best like everyone else but always retained a sliver of the reality of what it was like growing up in that world. When going through financial struggles later in life, the skills and solutions they likely experienced growing up when they were kids, probably provided similar solutions that I got to experience. One such "solution" was home-made maple syrup. Did they learn that growing up? I don't know. All I know was that when I was about 10 or 11, I often ate pancakes with a home-made version of maple syrup. Actually, I never thought anything about it and am actually surprised why I even thought about it this morning. My mom did a lot of experimentation with meals when I was young and some of it left a bad impression. Not all. but some. I don't remember being opposed to the syrup making. Sometimes we had store bought and sometimes not. When the "real" maple syrup was not in the budget, she made a home version of it for us. I don't know the recipe, but I believe when I say it was water, sugar and a bit of maple concentrate flavoring, that would probably be either pretty close or exactly it! It was heated on the stove to be hot, but thin like water and slightly sweet and slightly..... mapley. I'd probably just eat a pancake dry nowadays rather than pour hot maple flavored sugar water over it. But as a kid, it was just part of breakfast.
Why do I even bring this up? I suppose for no reason other than to illustrate that in hard times, we made do with what we had, and nobody really ever considered that were poor or impoverished. Hardship comes and goes. If you simply live your way through it with some intention of working your way out of it, eventually, you will. If you embrace it and allow it to become your primary "identity", you may never escape the grip of lack. I often look at the self-sufficient life we are living and see traces of those hard-times experiences. They are used as reminders of where we came from and why they do not have to be a part of our present or become our future.
Adventure Quote: “Hard times are like each of the four seasons which comes around and goes away.” ― Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
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