SAVING THE SUGAR BUSH

A technological revolution has transformed the ancient tradition of sugar making-with big implications for local economies and ecosystems imperiled by climate change.

- ASHLEY STIMPSON

AARON WIGHTMAN WAS ALMOST BORN IN A SUGARHOUSE.

It was early April, and his parents were boiling maple sap in the Western New York shack where they produced syrup and other maple-flavored goods. "It was pretty rustic," Wightman says, "with just enough power for some lightbulbs." In other words, not the ideal place for his mother to go into labor.

Fortunately, the labor pains turned out to be a false alarm, and Wightman was born a few days later in the hospital-but it wasn't long before he was back in the sugarhouse. As a toddler, he crawled near the steamy wood-fired boilers his father tended over, sometimes all night. By the time he was 10 years old, Wightman was trudging through the woods, collecting hundreds of sap-filled buckets by hand.

Most of us, when we think about maple syrup, picture rosy-cheeked New Englanders dressed in buffalo plaid, tree trunks slung with galvanized buckets, and steam pouring from a rudimentary shack tinseled with icicles. As it turns out, our imaginations are a little outdated. These days, maple sugaring is less of a handicraft and more of a science, as new equipment has enabled producers to make more maple syrup-and money-faster and easier, no all-nighters necessary.

Wightman has graduated from the family sugarhouse to the Cornell Maple Program, where he oversees 7,800 tapped trees across four miles of an experimental forest outside of Ithaca, New York. During sugaring season, the program's Arnot Maple Lab produces 400 gallons of syrup a day, a volume unthinkable just two decades ago, now made possible by stateof-the-art technology.