Sugar Maple Trees
On the edge of a natural bowl in the land, six apple trees form a half-circle around an aging sugar maple tree. Some of its branches are larger than the apple trees themselves and defy gravity as they snake out parallel to the ground. An enormous slab of limestone reclines near its trunk, an odd altar covered in moss, leaf and broken twigs. It is most beautiful in winter, when the wild raspberries and summer plant-life die back and leave the rock and towering tree exposed in sharp lines and deep browns. The bowl whispers of somber rootedness, endurance and shelter. Like the feel of an empty church at noon in the middle of the week, a sweet stillness folds around me in winter when I sit there.
These dark-barked giants dot the ridge line of the property, some with girths that would take three adult men to reach around. In the autumn, they turn a rich orange gold, and the woods explode in warm light. During the summer months, they shade so well that not much will grow directly beneath their canopies. On the trail to the Apple Tree Field, the skeleton of one grand maple plays host to row upon row of shelf fungi, her limbs piled around her like a funeral pyre. Like the birch, these trees serve as major trail markers on the land. Often, when you find a big sugar maple, you will also find apple trees nearby, a hint that the early settlers on our land valued and kept both, even as the lumbermen came through.
Sugar Maples are of course the source for that beloved pancake topping, maple syrup, and the ultimate treat of sugar maple candies. Its wood is also used for veneers, furniture building and so forth, although many of our trees are deeply branched and not much use for board lengths to a lumberman’s eye. And that it just fine by me.
Beauty is never a “useless” quality.
These trees live 300-400 years, which means some of the ones on the land were possibly already hundred years old when our country was founded. At night, the National Anthem snakes through the forest, compliments of the airbase on the other side of the river. The Sugar Maples bear witness, day in and day out.
Medicinally, the bark can be made into an infusion that helps sore eyes and the infusions of the inner bark can ease coughs and break up mucus. The syrup also has qualities that cleanse the liver and kidneys. Most folks will vote the maple syrup itself as the great gift of these trees. In the spring, I can take a drive around the North Country and see the snaking tubes linking tree to tree, all running to a building where the sap must be rendered on low heat, gently boiling off the water and leaving the sugary thick treat behind. It takes forty gallons of sap to make a single gallon of maple syrup (this can vary with the sugar content of your own trees), but even small trees (15-18 inches in diameter) can produce over ten gallons each week. One arborist told us the enormous maple in our Apple Tree Field could support as many as 12 taps! I have found wonderful articles online about small-batch maple syrup processing and may have to try one outdoor open-fire technique in the spring.
Midlife is the time of the sugar maple, the urge to give of myself in writing, in teaching and in care for my parents, children and grandchildren. Much of what I offer has been boiled down over the fire of experience, and yet, more continues to rise from the roots, feeding gardens, art, and even the restoration of buildings thought beyond hope. But the maples also counsel times of wintery dark quiet and rest, of murmuring to nearby elder rocks about the meaning of time, cycles, and patient abiding.