Delta County Historical Archives Photo Gathering sap in the olden days in a Cornell sugar bush, circa 1950.

Karen Wils photo
My dad and children in front of the old McFadden sugar house.

ESCANABA — The sweet and messy month of March is upon us.

Sloppy, wet, muddy and maple-ly, this month is an awesome time of transition.

March is a month of hard work and hard going.

It is neither winter nor spring. In Upper Michigan, March is a magical time of give and take. Snowshoeing can be difficult on the waning winter’s snow. The roads can be challenging with muddy ruts or potholes.

But just the essence of March air is a spring tonic strong enough to cure cabin fever.

The maple trees have drawn us Yoopers into the March woods for many generations. As the sap rose on warm days and flowed back down on crisp cool nights, we were there with birch bark containers to buckets to plastic tubing ready to catch the sweet stuff.

The woodlands around our family camp in Cornell have produced quite a few gallons of maple syrup over the years.

Great uncles of mine, the McFadden brothers, ran a successful sugar bush decades ago. My dad would tell stories of the steam from the boiling, the heat and the hard work that went into sugaring.

The days of buckets and pails are gone, but descendants still tap in the hardwoods near the river.

My son, too, was tempted by the magic of the maple. When he was in high school, he would snowshoe into camp and tap and haul sap by toboggan load to be boiled into the amber-gold syrup.

There is nothing like the smoky, sweet taste of maple syrup made from trees that you know like family.

And there is nothing as messy as melting snow, sleet, rain, smoke, sweat and mud that March brings with it.

In the olden days, the Native Peoples wore snowshoes and moccasins to take on the maple sugaring. Then came horse-drawn sleighs, wool pants and leather boots to go tree tapping with.

Today, we wear a variety of foot gear depending on the March weather. We may start out with snowshoes on our feet. Some days, ice creepers work better, and finally rubber boots as the snow cover gives way to bare ground.

Wet wool, wet dogs and wood smoke make up the aroma of March.

Tapping trees and boiling the sap is a long and tedious job, just like the coming of spring time.

So grab the mop and the maple syrup and enjoy some hard work and some sweet times. Go for a little walk in the woods. You can almost hear the sap rising and feel the promise of spring.

——

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