At Full Throttle

WEATHER: At noon Wednesday the thermometer registers 50 in the shade. Yesterday was cooler at 40; it stayed stuck on 40 all night. It froze briefly the previous night.

HOW’S IT RUNNING? The trees have fully awakened; sparkly sap pounds into the tanks night and day from the 10,000 individual maple tree pumps.

BOILING STATUS: Today is Day Five. Last night was the first post-midnight boil. We anticipate night after long night as there is no forecast of a freeze-up.

MUSIC TO BOIL BY:

Regina Spektor (Ana loves her)

First Aid Kit  (Chief of Operations’s current singer crush)

A BRIEF ROAD TRIP THROUGH ONE CORNER OF GOD’S COUNTRY:

Yesterday I drove to Cabot,
north across the broad valley between Mt.Mansfield and the Worcester Range,
turning east in Morrisville to follow the narrow Lamoille River Valley to Hardwick and beyond, climbed for winding miles then descended to Joe’s Pond and West Danville,
a right turn onto Rte. 2, down past high meadows to Goodrich’s Sugarhouse to pick up supplies.

I crossed into God’s Country in Walden where the open fields of dairy farms slope up to the horizon. As always, my eye followed the contours of the wooded ridges and I knew  I’d arrived in Maple Country, too, from the naked maple trees bristling all in a row against the sky. Driving back into Nebraska Valley a few hours later, I noted anew that our ridge lines here feature spruce and fir breaking up the hardwoods.

MACRO: BIg sky, top of the world, a sense of being far from home

MICRO:
Lamoille River open in Morrisville, frozen upstream in Hardwick and beyond.
Snow only on north-facing slopes until Walden. Past that, snow on all exposures.
Cedar trees evoking the north.
No steam rising from any of the sugarhouses.