Hiking.
On Saturday, Outdoors Club went on another exciting trek, this time to Oregon Ridge Park and Nature Center, located about forty minutes away in Baltimore County.
We went for a maple sugar tapping tour and demonstration, which started immediately when we arrived. Our tour guide showed us how to tell a chestnut tree from a maple tree and tapped a tree in front of us, meaning she stuck a little spout into the tree attached to a bucket. From this, sap will flow through the season, and from the sap, they can make maple sugar and maple syrup. We were each able to try some fresh sap from one of the trees. As sap is generally about 96% water, it barely tasted any different from regular fresh water.
Me, down next to the lifeguard chairs. This is a beach in the summer!
After the tour, we wandered around outside where they had a few demonstrations set up. One guy had a fire stoked and was demonstrating how Native Americans would boil the sap by heating a stone and placing it directly into the sap. They also had more samples of sap and various grades of syrup. Seeing the different tastes of the syrups was fascinating–the darker syrup that came from sap collected later in the year was sweeter.
Afterwards, we went into the nature center itself. I made friends with a bird and a little boy, as well as with a bunch of turtles. There we saw a video that showed us the machinery used for large scale creation of maple syrup, narrated by two small children.
We then embarked on a two mile hike in the snow. I’ve hiked in the snow before, as Yellowstone had a ton of snow when I went up in May last year, but I’d forgotten how much slower you move when you have to drive your way through.
We followed the trail almost all of the way, but we got lost at the last minute and came across a beach. I was really excited and cautiously walked across a little bit of the water, which was completely iced over and covered in snow at least ankle-deep. There was a playground as well, but I refrained there. We had to hop a fence, but we made it back to the center successfully!
I previously had no idea that maple syrup was made in Maryland, so this was a really cool forage into some of the cultural aspects and history of the state.
The group of us on our hike. All of these photos are from the Outdoors Club Facebook page.
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