Boiling
It Down
Maybe it's the approach of Easter and Passover, our culture's
special time for the contemplation of resurrection and redemption,
or maybe it's just the promise of the end of winter. But if
there's a season of metaphors, it's spring for sure, and one
of the clearest and sweetest is that the sap's running. First
year in three in fact it's been running pretty well.
Nah, we're not about to suggest life's somehow like maple
syrup or a bowl of cherries because so far as we can tell,
it's not. But because our species seems to have either the
gift or the curse of trying to make sense of things, using
what we do understand to try and grasp what we don't so readily
is one of the few ways we have of actually succeeding at it.
Most of you know we sometimes do that in our editorials: try
to appropriate what we see before us as a window into a broader
and hopefully more useful description of the reality we share.
Of course whether that's ultimately helpful or thought provoking
to anyone we leave entirely to you.
Thus prefaced, consider the sugar maple, the season's most
obvious proof of the improbably miraculous nature of everyday
reality. Against the laws of gravity, it pumps the melting
snowpack to its crown of buds. And somewhere between the microscopic
root hairs that draw the winter's snows inside it and the
holes we drill to let a bit out, the snow becomes food; a
solution of complex carbohydrates made from light stored as
energy in the cells of a tree, and set in motion by enzymes
activated by patterns of temperature change. Nothing simple
going on here. Then we step in of course, drawing off a portion
of the flow, superheating it in great flat pans, and returning
the snow to the sky in clouds of steam. We bubble it down
to a measurably specific gravity - just so dense and no more
- and between the tree and us, a way's been found to caramelize
and pour and taste the sunlight that soaked last summer's
leaves before they turned. And that's just what happens
before the jugs get sealed. Most would say the real magic's
in the eating.
One could of course take the position that there's nothing
mystical, certainly nothing metaphorical about any of this:
It's all just what it is, a simple convergence of one botanical
and one primate branch of 4 billion years of evolution. And
while there's nothing wrong with expressing it that way, to
say that "explains" anything clearly raises more
questions than it answers.
There's about 180 taps running down the mountain to my house
now. That's not a commercial number by any stretch of the
imagination, but when the main line's running to the holding
tank, it's like a great intravenous transfusion in progress.
The rush of a one-inch sap line with 300 feet of vertical
drop, yeah, that's an experience new to the advent of plastic
tubing maybe 20 years ago. And yet whatever technology's employed,
everything about sugaring is still a crapshoot. In any given
spring it may work well or not, mostly based on the weather
but who knows what other factors are involved. None of the
old timers I know will even venture a guess.
Maybe that's why the simple choice to even do it each season
is always so clear an expression of faith in the future, and
why most of us see those who've been sugaring for the better
part of a lifetime as at least a bit heroic. Their connection
with the past, our connection with them, they're both things
that help us see clearly how we as a community are bound to
the land and its cycles in ways that aren't always easy to
articulate but which most of us, most of the time, really
do understand. That's why those connections, that continuity,
they're all part of the treasure of the Catskills which all
of us are privileged to share, whether it's the view from
Slide or Tremper or High Point, the sparkle of the Esopus
on opening day, or the sound of the songbirds coming home.
Maybe the rising of the sap evokes the rising of our awareness
of what's coming, and our connection with what's been here
all along. Maybe it's just a sign of the awakening from
winter to the flowering of another year, or maybe it's a reminder
of the sweetness of what we've come to appreciate but that's
often overlooked. Could be of course that what it boils down
to is that sometimes we've just got to cook off a whole lot
of excess stuff, to distill the essence of what's most precious
from everything else. Takes a whole lot of heat and energy
to pull of, but then, so do most things worth doing.
