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.
