For those who have never been in our main woods, let me explain.
Our main wooded chunk is about 30 acres. On two property borders, the woods run-into the woods of our neighbors. Both these sides have the remains of a barbed-wire fence right on the property line. On another end, our woods run into a guy’s over-grown field (with same wire fencing), and the back-end runs into our scrappy, brush property of 10 acres. I have “No Trespassing” signs plastered all over these property lines.
It’s not like we have a random chunk of land stuck on 300 acres of woods. The total wooded area might be 80 back there.
After 4 years, we have finally managed to carve out the access roads going through the front chunk of our woods, and this is how we get to our maple syrup buckets.
Since we are doing syrup, I’m out there pretty much everyday (unless it’s very cold, then the sap does not flow), and since I’m out there the most, I notice EVERYTHING.
Especially if it’s in an area I’m always visiting . . .
Last week I went out to empty buckets, and as soon as I was on the main trail, I saw it straight-off: a massive white line on a small sapling.
Funny, I thought. I KNOW I would have noticed THIS before!
There are other lines marked on trees from previous owners — but these are either spray-painted in blue, or painted-on with thick red paint. When I rubbed this white mark, it felt waxy or oily. Like an oil pastel, or maybe those crayons used in construction. I could tell it was recent, it easily rubbed right-off with my finger.
Weird. How had I not noticed THIS right on my main access road? So I erased it.
I didn’t go back there for a few days thanks to cooking down the sap over the weekend, so when I went back out yesterday (Monday), I stopped the side by side dead on the trail . . . .
There was another white line!
This time, it was on the other side of the trail, but still right smack in front of me where I could see it. It was plastered all over another small sapling, RIGHT NEXT TO MY SAP BUCKET!
There’s NO WAY I could have missed this before! The tree was right at the end of the fork in the trail, and that bucket was one I always made sure to check!
I vigorously rubbed the new mark off, then went to work dumping buckets. Slowly. Lost in random thoughts of who was marking my trees . . .
The kids I knew had NOT been back here. Heck, the kids hadn’t even left the house!
Finally I came-up with a plan.
I would bring a few Taco Bell sauce packets back with me Tuesday afternoon and leave a message on the last tree that had been marked. You know, the ones with the cute little messages on them? Yeah . . .
Obviously whoever is coming back here knows someone is here a lot, the buckets are full of sap, and then the sap disappears, so very clearly someone is back here tending the sap buckets.
I’ll leave a message, and see if I get one back (and hopefully not with a knife stuck through it)!