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I Could Bear-ly Breathe

Writer's picture: Larry FortinLarry Fortin

In today’s post, I will provide an update on where we are with the Vermont Cabane De Sucre project (Vermont Sugarhouse). I will also look at the forest for the trees and discuss how easy it is to get lost in the details of a plan like this that can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed. And in a somewhat related story, I will recount what happened to me one day in late fall when I was 16 years and my encounter with a black bear.


We continue to move the Vermont Cabane De Sucre project forward. I had a nice discussion with Bryan at Leader Evaporator, where I communicated that we are planning to have around 1000 taps (the number of spouts we will have in maple trees), and that I would like to keep the boiling (when we boil the sap to concentrate it down to syrup) to around 10 hours with each sap run (when the temperature is just right and the trees are producing maple sap in the spring). Literature states that we can expect one gallon of sap per tap in a 24-hour period and that would be approximately 1000 gallons of sap. With this information we can work backward and divide the 1000 gallons of sap by 10 hours of boiling which would require an evaporator that can evaporate 100 gallons of water per hour. Bryan, then followed up a couple of days later with five different evaporator options. Charla and I have decided we want to go with a traditional wood evaporator that is four (4) feet wide, and 12 feet long. This is substantially larger than our initial plan and respective estimate. Our initial estimate, for this component of the project was $13,500. This has been bumped to $24,500 which increases our total project estimate to $53,000. Fortunately, the plan for the sugarhouse is to be 16 feet wide which will accommodate the proposed Evaporator.


A week or so ago, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. startled realizing I hadn’t planned for how we would be getting to the sugarhouse and getting to the trees to tap them when there could be four feet of snow on the ground. Charla and I discussed our options of putting tracks on the ATV. This option looks to be a great option, however tracks are on the expensive side, and I wouldn’t want them on in the summer so we could use the ATV for other things. This would require taking them on and off seasonally. The other option would be to buy a snowmobile and make trails from my mother’s house to the sugarhouse and throughout the sugarbush. If we make passes regularly, then we should be able to travel to the sugarhouse by ATV and snowmobile. Charla and I decided on this option. So, we will be in the market for an inexpensive snowmobile at some point in the future.


This project, as with others, the “devil is in the details”. After the pricing for the project increased substantially, and I hadn’t planned on how to get to the sugarbush, I was feeling a little like the project was controlling us, vs us controlling the project. Often, in my technical career, myself and a large group would be responsible for implementing large muti-million-dollar computer systems over multiple years.


This requires a significant amount of planning and breaking the project down into a “work breakdown structure” where each task is broken into subtasks to the point where the subtask is understood and can be estimated. Then all the subtasks are put into a project plan, and individuals are assigned to each task with the respective estimates. It is easy to get overwhelmed with the prospects of such a large endeavor.


There is a great book by Robert Maurer called One Small Step Can Change Your Life – The Kaizen Way. The author discusses what happens to us when too many tasks, or a stressful situation arises. The primal portion of our brain, where the fight or flight decision is made, may cause us to want to get out of a given situation. Our brain is protecting us and telling us to get to safety. When the primal part of our brain is activated, our higher-level cortex part of the brain that lets us handle things like planning, thinking, and reasoning all get shut down until we are safe. Only then can the cortex part of our brain start functioning again.


I always keep a couple copies of the One Small Step book around so I can hand them out to employees, family members or whomever might be experiencing a stressful situation at any given time. And last week, I picked up the book and chuckled. This is a case where “I need to eat my own dog food” so to speak. I read the chapter on solving small problems. It reminded me to keep things small and focused on only one problem at a time to its completion to keep my primal part of my brain from being activated.


Growing up on the farm was hard work and required a lot of physical labor. When I was 16, I was regularly trying to impress members of the opposite sex. And so, I would take the opportunity to lift something heavier than I should, push something bigger than I could, throw something farther than I did the time before and wrestle farm animals that had their own fight or flight instincts activated.

I wouldn’t do this in front of potential future mates but would do it to build muscle and continue to fuel the testosterone I had running through my 16-year-old body. Forever striving to be the man’s man, the tough guy, a macho man.


One fall day in 1979, my father and I headed to the barn for evening chores. There were a couple of inches of fresh snow on the ground from earlier that morning which isn’t unusual in late October that far North. As we headed to the barn, we saw a black bear traveling down one of the distant fields heading towards us. The black bear was clearly visible against the white background. I looked at my father and asked if it was bear season. He said it was. I ran into the house and grabbed my old cowboy gun, the lever action Winchester 30-30 caliber rifle. My father had the pickup truck already moving as I jumped in and we headed up the dirt road. A short quick ride and my father stopped not far from where we last saw the bear. I quickly found its track in the snow and followed the track into a thicket of cedar trees. Inside this thicket I paused to listen. I could hear crunching and branches snapping. Dang, the snow hadn’t been able to make it to the ground as the evergreens held it all in their branches so I didn’t have any tracks to help me with where the bear might be. I could see a moving shadow periodically, but I couldn’t see clearly to know if my brain was creating the imaginary beast, or if I was actually seeing something.


I walked through the thicket trying to be quiet, but that wasn’t going to happen as it was so thick, I had to get down on my hands and knees a couple of times. After 10 minutes or so I gave up and I emerged back into the field. “No luck, eh?” my father asked. We walked back to the truck. My adrenaline was still pumping and my muscles starting to ache as they began to relax. Evidently, I had been a little tense at the prospect of an encounter with a black bear. Heading back to the house, we talked excitedly about what had just happened and what could have been. My father dropped me off at the house as he headed to the barn. I went into the house, put my gun back on the rack in the hallway and headed to the barn myself.


As I walked, with my head down, I was thinking how my status of a man’s man, macho guy could have been increased so substantially if I would have been able to take the bear. I would have been the envy of the extended family, especially my guy cousins. The story would have been great to tell whenever out on a date, thus increasing my standing among the ladies. Shaking my head, and while mumbling, I momentarily looked up. About 75 yards away, the bear was crossing the road in front of me. I spun around and beat my best 50-yard dash time back to the house, grabbed my gun, and was shoving bullets back in it as I ran back to the spot the bear crossed the road. I could see the back end of it about two hundred yards away as it headed into the neighbor’s hardwoods to the left of the dirt road.


I couldn’t believe my good fortune, to be given a second chance at hero status as I started following the bear tracks at a brisk walk. One of my flaws, as an early hunter, was to always look down at my prey’s tracks, instead of looking up where I might see them in the distance. As I followed the bear tracks straight up one ridge and then turn around 90 degrees and headed at an angle up another, I came up over a slight slope where the tracks were closer together. To my astonishment, the bear was up on its hind legs about 30 yards in front of me. We looked at each other for what seemed like a minute. I was so, so startled to see the bear, I simply froze. I could not move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. My arms felt like they were going to burst as I was so tense. The bear ran to my left into a group of softwoods (evergreens). I’m not sure how long I stood there before my brain was able to sort out what just happened. I did not pursue the bear. It was getting dark and I walked backwards for several yards before turning around and heading back to the house. Once I was in the field, I picked up the pace. I unloaded the gun and put it back on the rack. I walked to the barn, with nothing more than a story.

It would take a while before I would be brave enough to discuss what happened that day. It would take even longer for me to understand what happened to my body at that time. Buck fever, only I would call it bear fever. Evidently my primal system was still finding its way to maturity when I was 16. I did eventually learn to look around, not down at the animal tracks when hunting and I was able to take a black bear in Pennsylvania several years later.

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