“I did.” Nate grins at me and raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, yeah. I suppose you’ve seen this all before.” I’m a little disappointed but try not to show it.
Nate wraps his arm around my shoulder and kisses the top of my head.
“I have, but it’s always fun. Watching you see the whole festival for the first time will make it even better!”
Nate drives us out to the woods. As we come around a steep curve, I see a multitude of tents lined up in the marina parking lot. People are swarming everywhere though the festival just opened a few minutes ago.
“I can’t believe everything they’ve done since yesterday!” I say as Nate pulls up to the very front of the line, parking in what is obviously not a real parking space.
“I hope you’re hungry,” he says. “Half those tents are full of food.”
He isn’t lying. Every local restaurant seems to have a tent. Several local farmers also have booths selling preserves, fresh breads, or other baked goods. My stomach rumbles as we pass by a huge tent offering funnel cakes.
“Oh wow! That smells amazing!”
“Do you want some?” Nate asks.
“I am not passing that up!”
Once we finally make it past the food and various other marketing tents, we reach a long line of people waiting to embark on a horse-drawn hay wagon. I start to head to the back of it, but Nate just smiles and takes my hand, leading me to the front.
My face heats up as those waiting in line give us the side-eye, but Nate pays no attention. He walks right up to the back of the wagon and helps me up into it. I settle down on a bale of hay, and Nate slides in close to me, his arm around my shoulders.
“You know that makes me really uncomfortable,” I mumble quietly.
“All part of the package,” he whispers in my ear, “when your family pays for the festival.”
I roll my eyes, Nate snickers, and the wagon suddenly lurches forward as the horses take off in a trot. The wagon moves over a small bridge and onto a wide forest trail as the tour guide talks about the maple trees, Native American populations, and early settlers in the area. The wagon stops after a short ride, and we take a tour though trails I’ve walked dozens of times now, pointing out trees ready for tapping. The hike takes us to the end of the trail where different maple syrup processing is explained.
A group of women dressed in traditional Native American clothing place hot rocks in a hollowed-out ash log, boiling syrup as was done before the early settlers arrived. Beyond them, a man and two teenagers in early American wool garments add logs to a fire underneath a giant iron kettle as they explain the pioneer method of boiling sap.
“Is that the one you helped set up?” Nate asks, kissing my forehead.
“It is.” I smile up at him. “That thing is heavy!”
“Ha! I bet.”
At the end of the trail, the maple sugar shack is processing syrup. We step inside the dark building, and someone from the maple syrup plant named after Nate’s mother stands near the end of what looks like a metal maze. Inside the maze, liquid sap starts off thin and watery, but by the time the sap makes it to the end of the maze, it’s viscous and nearly ready to be bottled. The worker explains how gravity assists the precisely tilted tray in boiling the sap down.
?
??Lighter syrup is done first,” the worker says as he tosses more wood into the furnace below the maze, “and then the process starts again if you want darker syrup for cooking.”
“I’ll have to take you to the plant so you can see the modern way of doing this,” Nate says.
“Is it very different?”
“Really? No. It’s on a much larger scale, of course, but the basics are the same. Boil sap, make syrup and sugar. Pops swears it’s better when it’s made over a fire, but that just isn’t a profitable way of making it these days.”
I still as Nate mentions his father, wondering if he’ll finally say something about his death, but Nate turns away, his focus back on the presenter as he continues his lecture.
“Once the water is boiled out completely, you have maple sugar candy, which can be purchased out the door and around the left.”
“This is my favorite part,” Nate says as he takes a tiny piece of maple-leaf-shaped sugar and places it in my mouth.
“Oh, wow! That’s amazing!”