13 april 2023 Adventures at Sugarbush

 iskigamizigan ni a sugar bush, a sugar camp

   

   My stepson John lives with his wife and son on the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation in Bayfield County, Wisconsin. Among his other cultural activities, John is an avid ‘Sugarbush’ participant, requiring the tapping of sugar maple trees, acquisition of sap, and its boiling into maple syrup and maple sugar. Last year I said I would help him this year, and true to my word, I followed through. However, it didn’t go quite as planned. A normal sugarbush year does not have all this snow. 

   “It snowed and rained and froze, then came a big snow again. Usually it all melts off between times. Its never been so bad as this during sugarbush in my experience,” John said explaining the phenomenon. “The snow is two to three feet deep in places. We’ll have to wear snowshoes later, I’m thinking."

 

   Now realize, this is wearing snowshoes on narrow paths you've previously made, while carrying back to the truck parked on the forest road about 200 yards away, an open 5-gallon bucket of sap in each hand. "Try not to spill it." The emphasis being 'try,' in this case. Try not to spill it when you tangle snowshoe upon snowshoe; try not to spill it when, even with snowshoes on, you plunge one shoe deep into the snow and the other remains solid ... Stop and rest frequently if you're older than fifty-eight years old; more, if you're over seventy.

 

   Backing his sentiment up was an Ojibwe family of four brothers, three of whom I met individually during my stay there this week. “Our family has been doing this for a hundred years,” said Pete, his beautiful mixed-breed blue-eyed husky named “Makade,” (‘black’ in Ojibwe) ranging around him on a 20-foot leash. “I don’t remember seeing the ‘bush this bad. You got a lot of buckets out?”

   It was tough for John to know exactly how many buckets, pails, and bags he had out in his neck of the woods, a place not defined by ownership, fencelines, or section maps but primarily the frequency of practice during the sugarbush seasons. How far John’s buckets were from the forest road defined how hard he was willing to work to gather sap. Knowing that John often works his sugarbush by himself or with infrequent help (such as I was doing); his fluency in Ojibwemowin, and knowledge of Ojibwe culture earns him some real respect from the four brothers and others in the community.

 

John ahead on trail, before we used snowshoes

    

   Looking toward where he had his buckets randomly hung among the hundreds of 60’- 80’ tall sugar maple trees across an undulating snow-covered and running-water-under-the-snow expanse was mind-boggling to say the least. Without a precise system of numerical determination, stating an exact number was almost impossible.

   “I ... dunno,” said John, looking to me, the neophyte, for an estimation. Meeting an empty stare, he continued “Forty, fifty?”
“At least,” I wanted to say, fully believing we had hung that many at the very least. “Oh yeah, forty or more.”

   When Pete and his brothers were working the sugarbush as kids with their folks and cousins, he told me that they had hundreds of trees tapped and easily twice the number of buckets. Back then they used that much maple syrup and maple sugar for themselves as well as to have a commodity to sell for extra money. They also built a 'sugar camp: a place to spend the days with family and boil the sap down there in the woods. They still have the camp, but now their use was far less than that number of buckets, and return to sugarbush to solely maintain their culture.

   “Almost all the grand-kids have been out here; There’s been four or five of kids here the last three days. They love doing sugarbush.” Pete went to explain the sumptuous meals they prepared each day, morning, noon and night. “It’s all about the culture, teaching the kids how things were done and perpetuating it for the coming generations.”

   Some people in the community had tapped their trees too early, in mid-March, a practice that suggested opportunity other than cultural tradition. Discussing this with Pete, John said
“The trees tell us when it’s time.”

 

    Knowledge like this are common thought in Ojibwe communities; Palmville, not so much. Ask almost anyone in this township what the trees say to them and they’re likely to think you’re nuts, but from what I’ve learned on reservations, everything talks and teaches us.

   A case in point, every maple tree that John taps he offers a pinch of pipe tobacco and says a prayer of thanks in Lakota and Ojibwe, thanking the tree for its offering of sap. John learned from the elders, who he lived among on other reservations, that sap was not to be wasted, tap holes were not to be drilled too deep (a half to three-quarter inch at most), and to empty the buckets promptly so they don’t run-over.

   Several of the bags and pails in the area that were tapped in mid-March, were overflowing; no one was maintaining them regularly. Although it was thought of as wasteful, theft of the bounty in any respect was not an option by John and the others, as years of experience taught them long ago, that nearer the road they put their taps they increased their own risk of theft.

   This year an added barrier to accessing the area John frequents during sugarbush was a four foot tall berm of ice and snow pushed up by the snowplow. One trip up and over it with his big high-walled 30”x 48” plastic equipment sled full of buckets and pails and tools proved to be almost disastrous. Next time we came back it was something we definitely would have to remove.

   “We’ll bring the ax and the ice spud and chew our way through it tomorrow,” John may have said, not looking forward to the expenditure of labor on top of what we had to do just hiking to the trees.

   “I’ve learned a chainsaw is the way to go if you’re willing to maybe sacrifice a saw chain,” I said. “It’d be faster than chewing our way through that than using an ax and pry bar.
“Hell yes,” John said, realizing the potential.

   And so it was, the very next morning we had to break the beautiful stillness of the forest with his almost-new “Husqvarna 450 Rancher 20 in. 50.2cc 2-Cycle Gas Chainsaw” that started right up, after two pulls. (You gotta love that).

   John let me have the honors (Well, I was the help, after all) so I scribed the berm up and down and across into igloo-shaped blocks that John pried out and lifted out of the way, and soon we had a handsome walkway like no other in our stretch of the forest.

Leading the way, John took two steps then promptly sunk one of his boots, through the snow, practically up to his crotch. Generating a barrage of un-Ojibwe-like swear words, he leaned to one side and pulled his leg out no worse for the sudden event and continued on, leaving the chasm behind for me to avoid as he would repeat farther down the trail, all in stride.

   The third day, we discovered that snowshoes were really the way to go. John had never had to use snowshoes during sugarbush before, so it was as new to him as it was to me. I’ve never been too eager to use snowshoes as I’ve never found snowshoe bindings that stay tight on my feet for long, so when these did I was really impressed -- until they didn’t, and we were back at readjusting the heel and toe straps primarily. The shoes had a ratchet type binding system that held promise, but for the most part with ice build-up between our boots and the shoe, the straps loosened up like usual and became a problem.

 

   The difficulty squatting down and trying to tighten things up, without anything to hold onto or lean against is just annoying, but to attempt to step anywhere without the snowshoes as the days got warmer, was virtually impossible especially as everywhere around under the snow are fallen tree trunks and holes big enough for bears to hibernate in, laced with green ferns and other growing things eager to get out from under all this snow!

Ferns and other growing things eager to get out from under all this snow!