AuntShecky
03-30-2009, 05:07 PM
Sugaring Off
Unlike the hometown streets, gray all year, where all that was left of winter was an occasional soot-covered frozen pile, there was much more snow on the ground up here. The farther North the little car traveled on Rt. 22, the farther apart were the businesses –a link in a national hardware chain here, a clapboard Mom and Pop grocery store there. Single-family residences also kept respectable distances from one another, having no need of the “good fences” immortalized by the immortal poet of the region. Such observations would have gone unnoticed by a more frequent traveler but counted as highly significant by someone who doesn't get out of the house very much.
For this, Melanie was grateful, despite of the song and dance she had to do in order to go. As was his custom, Thom initially had tried to bail. As a way of pleading her case, she'd mentioned how the few movies they'd actually seen in a theatre invariably involved a cast of thousands of corpses and/or a series of multiple explosions. “What about all those chick flicks, like that DVD you made me sit through the other night?” he fired.
“What? How in God’s name is Citizen Kane a ‘chick flick’?”
Then, when she had brought out the heavy artillery, he mimicked her in an exaggerated, whining voice: “You promised!” Now he was flirting with the speed limit, in order to get her “little field trip” over and done with so he'd have plenty of time to catch the NCAA playoffs. With a sizeable sum unknown to her, Thom had entered the office pool, having drawn Gonzaga in the brackets.
“Oh yeah, in Washington State,” she had said in a tone intended to sound supportive. “Where Bing Crosby went to college.”
“Bing Crosby? What are ya? Eighty?”
“Take the next left,” she said.
The GPS said otherwise, so he kept going straight. Melanie considered the device to be a high-tech wild goose chaser. She had read several horror stories about how its glitches had left truckers with their rigs mired in mud, how a driver in some far-off land had nearly been led over a cliff. Yet Thom swore by the damned gizmo. When it became apparent that they were indeed lost, Melanie had to twist his arm to get him to stop at a convenience store and ask for the correct directions.
Even with the car windows closed, the spicy fragrance of evergreen aroma mingled with the smell of boiling maple announced that this must be the place. The tour having already started, they joined it in progress.
“. . . nights that are still cold, with relatively warmer days. So there is really a limited time frame for us to gather the raw liquid before spring arrives for real – and the energy of the trees gets re-directed toward photosynthesis.” In the library books which she remembered from childhood, the farmers had worn thick Mackinaw jackets, flat-topped caps with earflaps. This guy was in jeans and a nylon windbreaker, the orchard’s logo prominently festooned on the left front pocket, as well as on his baseball cap. Thick boots were on his feet, though, just like in the books.
“But when the sap starts running, we're ready for it!” the tour guide said. “In the old days gathering the sap was wicked. Time-consumin’, you know? And time is what we're racing against. If you'll look at this sample tree here, the farmers would drill just one hole in the bark right here. There’s an art to doin’ this so as not to harm the tree permanently. In the old days we would use hand-carved wooden taps, which were eventually replaced by stainless steel, like this.”
As if he were back in sixth grade, Thom raised his hand, but didn't wait to be acknowledged before blurting out “Which kind of tap would work better in a keg?” A couple of chuckles emanated from the crowd. Melanie rolled her eyes and for a second pretended she wasn't with him. Who did he think he was, a superannuated class clown?
“Each tree would have a pail like this, hanging under each tap, to catch the run-off. Then the pails would be collected and hauled down to the sugarhouse, where they would be emptied into the vats. Like I said, the process was pretty labor-intensive.”
“Both of these taps have been replaced with the next generation of technology. If you will follow me. . .” The tour guide led the group down a slight decline on which the path was shoveled smooth. A season’s worth of snowpack had stubbornly entrenched itself, but with the temperature flirting with forty and the sun high in the sky, more than one pair of feet met a hidden puddle. One of Thom’s cross-trainers got soaked through, and he shot her an accusatory look.
The tour guide stood in front of an expanse of trees that stretched to infinity. The were thousands of them, each one standing naked in the cold, its upper branches forming an individualized web against the blue sky. Melanie gazed at the regiments of sugar maples and wondered how they had looked in their fiery finery. But no leaf-peeping trip had ever been scheduled; the gas prices were too high then, she had been told. No doubt all ere healthy trees, but each specimen of Acer saccharum looked like a patient in intensive care. The clear plastic tube attached to each tree looked like an IV tube.
“This network of tubing carries the sap down to collection tanks. Which – if you don't mind me sayin’ it – are a heckava lot easier than emptyin’ pail after pail!”
Thom vigorously nodded up and down. “Ayuh,” he said with a sarcastic tone which Melanie hoped was obvious only to her. She knew him, and she knew that the people whom he was making fun of weren't his ultimate target. This from a guy who insisted on dressing like a teenager, and
constantly judging others, yet whose own pomposity had caused him to adopt an affected silent “h” in his first name way, way back in their college days. Melanie couldn't understand it. He used to be so funny.
As the tour guide led the group farther down the hill, they passed the aforementioned collection tanks, intermittently placed in a series, like markers on a trail. The path continued down the hill and ended at a wooden building, more finely constructed than a pavilion but much less than a lodge. Here with the air thick with the fragrance of sweet maple, Melanie also expected to smell
the homespun traces of burning logs. Twin puffs of smoke ascended from a pair of whistle-shaped metal chimneys on the roof, but their source, the tour guide informed his audience, was from oil burners, more efficient--albeit less romantic-- than the wood fires of old. “Watch your heads here, folks,” the leader warned, and the taller members of the contingent obediently ducked as the entered the rough-hewn doorway. For some reason, it was surprisingly quiet inside.
The tourists followed the leader up a short flight of steps, to a narrow catwalk lined with a railing , which was all that separated the non-employees from the large steaming vats seven feet below.
“Wow! Anybody tumble into one o’ them vats?” Undoubtedly Thom was sifting through the banks of his memory catalogue, and for one of his ancient “Man- falls-into- a-brewery- vat” joke to be adapted for the occasion.
“Nope!” the tour guide said. “We never lost a one. . .but if you're planning on jumpin’, let me know ahead o’ time so we can cover you with pancake makeup first. So, folks this is the point where the sap becomes maple syrup. We do this by a process called reverse osmosis.”
Melanie glanced over at Thom, checking his watch. The tour guide went on, “The sap is squeezed
through filters until we remove 70%
of the water. Then we can start the boiling operation. You might be surprised to learn that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup. So that’s a lot o’ boilin’! But modern technology has allowed us to produce up to 30 gallons of syrup an hour.”
When the tour guide started explaining about the differences between the colors of amber in various types of maple syrup, Thom started yawning and stretching with exaggerated gestures. “Now I've got one more thing to show you,” the tour guide announced. “If you'll all follow me back outside. . .
Watch your step, there.”
The audience found themselves standing near the parking lot, just a few feet from the vehicles in which they had come, their late-model cars, one or two schoolbuses. “Kids of all ages look
forward to sugaring-off time to a time-honored treat. Unfortunately, the snow that you see
around us has been here for quite a while. But if this was fresh snow, we'd take some of the syrup, when it’s still warm and pour it right on the snow. It’s the only kind of yellow snow you can eat! It’s called ‘jackwax.’ ‘
Thom leaned in, and cupped his hand to his ear. “Say again?”
“Jackwax!” the tour guide shouted, making Thom break out a self-satisfied smirk that was almost obscene.
On the way home she was hungry, but didn't ask if they could stop somewhere. It was still light, but outside the right side windows she could see the sun preparing to call it a day. He didn't say a word to her for miles, until spotting a dead cottontail on the shoulder of the road, Melanie let out an involuntary gasp.
Shaking his head, Thom chuckled less in mirth than disgust. “Jeesh! You're the only person on the entire planet who cries at roadkill. I suppose I should pull over so you can mourn.”
When he pulled up in front of their building, Melanie began to say, “I know you didn't want to do this, but just the same, thank–“
He cut her off. “Don't wait up,” he said. A millisecond after she shut the passenger side door, he took off, the tires squealing like some joy-riding kid.
As she prepared to crawl into the lonely bed, Melanie thought of the woods up north, where at that very moment Spring was beginning to stir up life, and all manner of natural substances would soon flow, water down from the melting mountains, blood through veins, liquids through tubes, xylem and phloem, up and down. No question that paths were leading toward new life from old love, hearts beating, juices bubbling. But the sap – the sap was right here.
Unlike the hometown streets, gray all year, where all that was left of winter was an occasional soot-covered frozen pile, there was much more snow on the ground up here. The farther North the little car traveled on Rt. 22, the farther apart were the businesses –a link in a national hardware chain here, a clapboard Mom and Pop grocery store there. Single-family residences also kept respectable distances from one another, having no need of the “good fences” immortalized by the immortal poet of the region. Such observations would have gone unnoticed by a more frequent traveler but counted as highly significant by someone who doesn't get out of the house very much.
For this, Melanie was grateful, despite of the song and dance she had to do in order to go. As was his custom, Thom initially had tried to bail. As a way of pleading her case, she'd mentioned how the few movies they'd actually seen in a theatre invariably involved a cast of thousands of corpses and/or a series of multiple explosions. “What about all those chick flicks, like that DVD you made me sit through the other night?” he fired.
“What? How in God’s name is Citizen Kane a ‘chick flick’?”
Then, when she had brought out the heavy artillery, he mimicked her in an exaggerated, whining voice: “You promised!” Now he was flirting with the speed limit, in order to get her “little field trip” over and done with so he'd have plenty of time to catch the NCAA playoffs. With a sizeable sum unknown to her, Thom had entered the office pool, having drawn Gonzaga in the brackets.
“Oh yeah, in Washington State,” she had said in a tone intended to sound supportive. “Where Bing Crosby went to college.”
“Bing Crosby? What are ya? Eighty?”
“Take the next left,” she said.
The GPS said otherwise, so he kept going straight. Melanie considered the device to be a high-tech wild goose chaser. She had read several horror stories about how its glitches had left truckers with their rigs mired in mud, how a driver in some far-off land had nearly been led over a cliff. Yet Thom swore by the damned gizmo. When it became apparent that they were indeed lost, Melanie had to twist his arm to get him to stop at a convenience store and ask for the correct directions.
Even with the car windows closed, the spicy fragrance of evergreen aroma mingled with the smell of boiling maple announced that this must be the place. The tour having already started, they joined it in progress.
“. . . nights that are still cold, with relatively warmer days. So there is really a limited time frame for us to gather the raw liquid before spring arrives for real – and the energy of the trees gets re-directed toward photosynthesis.” In the library books which she remembered from childhood, the farmers had worn thick Mackinaw jackets, flat-topped caps with earflaps. This guy was in jeans and a nylon windbreaker, the orchard’s logo prominently festooned on the left front pocket, as well as on his baseball cap. Thick boots were on his feet, though, just like in the books.
“But when the sap starts running, we're ready for it!” the tour guide said. “In the old days gathering the sap was wicked. Time-consumin’, you know? And time is what we're racing against. If you'll look at this sample tree here, the farmers would drill just one hole in the bark right here. There’s an art to doin’ this so as not to harm the tree permanently. In the old days we would use hand-carved wooden taps, which were eventually replaced by stainless steel, like this.”
As if he were back in sixth grade, Thom raised his hand, but didn't wait to be acknowledged before blurting out “Which kind of tap would work better in a keg?” A couple of chuckles emanated from the crowd. Melanie rolled her eyes and for a second pretended she wasn't with him. Who did he think he was, a superannuated class clown?
“Each tree would have a pail like this, hanging under each tap, to catch the run-off. Then the pails would be collected and hauled down to the sugarhouse, where they would be emptied into the vats. Like I said, the process was pretty labor-intensive.”
“Both of these taps have been replaced with the next generation of technology. If you will follow me. . .” The tour guide led the group down a slight decline on which the path was shoveled smooth. A season’s worth of snowpack had stubbornly entrenched itself, but with the temperature flirting with forty and the sun high in the sky, more than one pair of feet met a hidden puddle. One of Thom’s cross-trainers got soaked through, and he shot her an accusatory look.
The tour guide stood in front of an expanse of trees that stretched to infinity. The were thousands of them, each one standing naked in the cold, its upper branches forming an individualized web against the blue sky. Melanie gazed at the regiments of sugar maples and wondered how they had looked in their fiery finery. But no leaf-peeping trip had ever been scheduled; the gas prices were too high then, she had been told. No doubt all ere healthy trees, but each specimen of Acer saccharum looked like a patient in intensive care. The clear plastic tube attached to each tree looked like an IV tube.
“This network of tubing carries the sap down to collection tanks. Which – if you don't mind me sayin’ it – are a heckava lot easier than emptyin’ pail after pail!”
Thom vigorously nodded up and down. “Ayuh,” he said with a sarcastic tone which Melanie hoped was obvious only to her. She knew him, and she knew that the people whom he was making fun of weren't his ultimate target. This from a guy who insisted on dressing like a teenager, and
constantly judging others, yet whose own pomposity had caused him to adopt an affected silent “h” in his first name way, way back in their college days. Melanie couldn't understand it. He used to be so funny.
As the tour guide led the group farther down the hill, they passed the aforementioned collection tanks, intermittently placed in a series, like markers on a trail. The path continued down the hill and ended at a wooden building, more finely constructed than a pavilion but much less than a lodge. Here with the air thick with the fragrance of sweet maple, Melanie also expected to smell
the homespun traces of burning logs. Twin puffs of smoke ascended from a pair of whistle-shaped metal chimneys on the roof, but their source, the tour guide informed his audience, was from oil burners, more efficient--albeit less romantic-- than the wood fires of old. “Watch your heads here, folks,” the leader warned, and the taller members of the contingent obediently ducked as the entered the rough-hewn doorway. For some reason, it was surprisingly quiet inside.
The tourists followed the leader up a short flight of steps, to a narrow catwalk lined with a railing , which was all that separated the non-employees from the large steaming vats seven feet below.
“Wow! Anybody tumble into one o’ them vats?” Undoubtedly Thom was sifting through the banks of his memory catalogue, and for one of his ancient “Man- falls-into- a-brewery- vat” joke to be adapted for the occasion.
“Nope!” the tour guide said. “We never lost a one. . .but if you're planning on jumpin’, let me know ahead o’ time so we can cover you with pancake makeup first. So, folks this is the point where the sap becomes maple syrup. We do this by a process called reverse osmosis.”
Melanie glanced over at Thom, checking his watch. The tour guide went on, “The sap is squeezed
through filters until we remove 70%
of the water. Then we can start the boiling operation. You might be surprised to learn that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup. So that’s a lot o’ boilin’! But modern technology has allowed us to produce up to 30 gallons of syrup an hour.”
When the tour guide started explaining about the differences between the colors of amber in various types of maple syrup, Thom started yawning and stretching with exaggerated gestures. “Now I've got one more thing to show you,” the tour guide announced. “If you'll all follow me back outside. . .
Watch your step, there.”
The audience found themselves standing near the parking lot, just a few feet from the vehicles in which they had come, their late-model cars, one or two schoolbuses. “Kids of all ages look
forward to sugaring-off time to a time-honored treat. Unfortunately, the snow that you see
around us has been here for quite a while. But if this was fresh snow, we'd take some of the syrup, when it’s still warm and pour it right on the snow. It’s the only kind of yellow snow you can eat! It’s called ‘jackwax.’ ‘
Thom leaned in, and cupped his hand to his ear. “Say again?”
“Jackwax!” the tour guide shouted, making Thom break out a self-satisfied smirk that was almost obscene.
On the way home she was hungry, but didn't ask if they could stop somewhere. It was still light, but outside the right side windows she could see the sun preparing to call it a day. He didn't say a word to her for miles, until spotting a dead cottontail on the shoulder of the road, Melanie let out an involuntary gasp.
Shaking his head, Thom chuckled less in mirth than disgust. “Jeesh! You're the only person on the entire planet who cries at roadkill. I suppose I should pull over so you can mourn.”
When he pulled up in front of their building, Melanie began to say, “I know you didn't want to do this, but just the same, thank–“
He cut her off. “Don't wait up,” he said. A millisecond after she shut the passenger side door, he took off, the tires squealing like some joy-riding kid.
As she prepared to crawl into the lonely bed, Melanie thought of the woods up north, where at that very moment Spring was beginning to stir up life, and all manner of natural substances would soon flow, water down from the melting mountains, blood through veins, liquids through tubes, xylem and phloem, up and down. No question that paths were leading toward new life from old love, hearts beating, juices bubbling. But the sap – the sap was right here.