Upper Valley Connections

Your weekly guide to life along the Connecticut River

Spring arrives tomorrow — officially, at least. The mud is here, the sap is running, and the Valley is shaking off winter. This week’s digest has plenty to get you outside and into the community, plus a little history about what this time of year has always meant right here along the Connecticut River.

The Original Maple Makers

Tomorrow is the spring equinox, and if you live in the Upper Valley you already know what that means: mud season, longer light, and maple sap running in the trees. It’s one of the most distinctly here things about living in this corner of the world.

But before the sugarhouses, the stainless steel evaporators, and the little jugs shaped like Vermont, there was a much older tradition — and it started right here.

The Western Abenaki people have been tapping maple trees in this region for thousands of years. Their name for this time of year is Sogalikas — the sugaring moon. And their methods were ingenious.

Early on, rather than boiling sap over fire, they’d leave birch-bark baskets (maskwaijo) of sap outside overnight and throw away the ice in the morning. Ice is mostly water — what’s left behind is concentrated sugar. They were essentially freeze-distilling maple syrup, no heat required.

When they did boil, they dropped superheated rocks — called the Grandfathers — directly into hollowed-out log troughs filled with sap. The rocks transferred heat, the water evaporated, and eventually thick, dark maple sugar formed at the bottom. Not so different from what happens in a sugarhouse today, just with more dramatic rock-handling.

There’s even a legend about it. According to Abenaki oral tradition, the Creator originally filled maple trees with thick, ready-made syrup — no work required. Glooskap, a beloved trickster-hero figure, thought that was too easy and watered it down. Thanks to Glooskap, we now have to boil forty gallons of sap to get one gallon of syrup. Make of that what you will.

When European settlers arrived, the Abenaki shared what they knew. The whole tradition — tapping, collecting, boiling — passed directly from Indigenous practice into the Vermont and New Hampshire farming culture we celebrate today.

And the tradition never left. The Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, based in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, still runs a maple sugaring operation in their tribal forests today, using modern sustainable techniques while keeping the cultural practice alive and teaching it to the next generation.

The next time you pour syrup on your pancakes, maybe say wliwni — thank you — to the people who figured all this out first. Learn more from the Abenaki tribe directly →

And if you want to experience sugaring season firsthand this weekend, Billings Farm in Woodstock is hosting their Maple Open House — tapping demonstrations, fresh sap, and all things maple. It’s worth the drive.

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