When I moved to the Village Of Marathon, 30 years ago this month as a matter of fact, I only had a slight idea of how this change to small town living was going to affect me, and what new wonders I was in for. I didn't have to wait long for the first one to put in an appearance. Only a few weeks after I was all moved in to my apartment on the top floor of a beautiful old craftsman home, sitting on the banks of a sweet little river, I was awakened one morning by the sounds of men's voices, a rhythmic tapping, and what sounded like metal cans being clanked together. I sat up in bed, opened the curtains, and was privy to my first ever lesson in tapping maple trees!
Since this was before I became addicted to gardening, I had no way of knowing that the trees which lined the street in front of my home were maple trees. It was March, after all, way up in northern New York, so the branches were bare of the leaves that might have identified them to this novice. I got dressed and went outside to see what the guys were doing. They had a pickup truck that was loaded in the back with metal pails and what looked like tiny water faucets. The would go from tree to tree, putting in a tap (what the little faucets were actually called) about 2-2 1/2 inches deep, and suspending a metal pail from the tap. The men were kind enough to take the time to explain the entire process to me, from the tapping of the trees to the finished product - maple syrup. They told me that our town had an abundance of maple trees and that they had been tapping them since the town's very beginnings in 1861. Every few days the men would go around and empty the pails into giant buckets lined up in the back of the truck and return the pails so they could collect as much as they could while the sap was still running, only a few weeks out of the year. The buckets were taken across the river to the other side of the village to a wooden building called The Sugar Shack. There the sap which had been collected was poured into a giant vat heated by a roaring fire 24/7, which the men watched over in shifts. The idea is to evaporate the water and boil down the sap to its syrupy essence. The final product is then bottled and sold, much of it, as I was to discover, at the town's annual Maple Festival which happened every Spring rain, snow, or shine (I've attended in all kinds of weather).
As it happened, The Sugar Shack was also just across the river from where I lived and for weeks the smell of maple syrup wafted over the entire village. Is it any wonder that the local diner and coffee shops had an onslaught of folks ordering pancakes for breakfast? I couldn't wait to get my first taste of real maple syrup tapped from the very trees in front of my home!
Even though I no longer live up in Marathon, having moved about 45 minutes south to be closer to family and friends, I still go up every year for the festival. We weren't able to have one for the last two years due to the pandemic, but this weekend coming up we will be celebrating not only the beginning of spring and the first maple syrup of the season, but the return of the Maple Festival. It's not just about the food, the crafts, and the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfasts ... and, of course, the crowing of the Maple Queen. It's about community, and tradition, and the things that live on regardless of pandemics and fear. It's the coming together of complete strangers once a year when we're all family, all part of of the greater community called humanity, for one weekend a year to enjoy Mother Nature's gifts to us. It's what reminds us of what is important (and the maple candy is worth the trip if nothing else!). The fact that thousands have been known to show up over the course of the two-day event is a testament to family, tradition, spring, and a love for Mother Nature's liquid gold.
And so it is.
