We are tied together through tapping!

So many of our great grandparents and grandparents tapped maples and boiled the sap. It is an Upper Michigan tradition dating back to the time of native people and birch bark vessels.

Tapping and sugaring is a rite of spring.

The quick energy or “sugar high” from the mighty maples was just enough of a nutritional boost to get our ancestors through the winter.

Karen Wils photo Old time tapping in the McFadden sugar bush.

Most pioneering families had a sugar bush.

When the fluffy snow turned solid and when the longer days of sunlight began to erode away the snow by the base of the trees, it was time to tap.

The sap rises best when the nights are cold and freezing and the day time highs reach up into the thirties or forties.

As the maples gear up for another growing season, you can almost hear them whispering to one another “remember the youngsters, the saplings and the dreams of yesterday.”

The trees might recall the horse drawn sleighs, big iron cooking pots, folks on snowshoes, tin pails and the smell of smoke and the hiss of steam.

Karen Wils photo Bob with first sap of the season.

When I was a child wandering around the woods near our family camp in the Cornell area, so often I’d come across sugaring relics like a rusted pail, stone fireplaces and a dilapidated sugar shack.

The McFadden family, relatives of my father maintained a sugar bush in that area many decades ago. I remember my Grandma Rose and my dad talking about the sugaring days of old.

There’s something nostalgic and romantic about tapping maple trees, the many hours of boiling down the sap to make syrup or more cooking to make maple sugar.

For many years, the hardwood forest all around camp was silent in the spring time. No drip, drip, drip was heard to welcome in the first days of spring.

Life got busy and no one tapped the maple trees.

Then, during spring break last year, my son Bob got the idea that if he couldn’t get into the ice covered river to fish yet, why not do what his forefathers did and tap trees?

With a drill, some taps, buckets and lids, Bob was in business. Emptying sap and hauling containers made for some busy days and nights.

As the maple sap dripped and the voices of time ticked, we enjoyed a lovely weekend in the woods. It’s funny how doing an old-fashioned project like this can make time stand still for a moment.

We watched snow melt and puddles grow. The river changed from white with ice to torrents of blue running water.

The maple music, so hot and so cold — like a sweet melody that is sung by the young and the old.

I am sure that the maple trees all talked about how happy they were to be sweetening up our family again.

Tapping traditions continue throughout the U.P’s beautiful sugar bush. It is a sweet time to go for a walk in the woods.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.