Before making my way back to Grand Marais and home, I stopped for a few days at my parent's land in northern Wisconsin to help with the syruping.

I love making maple syrup and I'm not quite sure why. Being out side, warming weather, hard work, chopping wood, late nights watching the evaporator... whatever the reason it is something that I look forward to every year.

From what I understand it was an up and down season. An early sap run, then temperatures in the 60's where sap flow stopped completely and it appeared that the season was over. In the first week of April, 20" of new snow and cold temperatures froze solid any lingering sap in the buckets. Then a week of perfect maple syruping weather: cold nights below freezing and warm days above freezing.

You see, sap flow from sugar maples is entirely temperature dependent. A rise in temperature of the sapwood to above 32 degrees F. causes a positive pressure within the wood. This pressure produces the sap flow.

The exact mechanism for the production of the pressure is not completely understood, although several hypotheses have been advanced. None of these seem to fit all the requirements for explaining the sap flow. Simply put, I like to call it magic - Maple Magic.