If Willy Wonka took Turkish baths, his house would smell like this.
In the evaporating room at Gould’s Sugarhouse Sunday morning, clear liquid sap is boiling down into concentrated gooey goodness. The thick steam it lets off is warm and silky, with a slightly sweet aroma.
The place is packed with visitors. This family-run Shelburne Falls landmark, now in its 55th year, attracts locals and tourists so readily that the matriarch of this maple dynasty, Helen Gould, scoffs when I ask whether business is good this year. “We’re busy all the time, every day of the week,” she says. “People just come. Some have been coming all their lives.”
Sunday’s pack of visitors spans generations. At one wall, the evaporating room connects to a dark wood-panelled retail shop where a couple in their 80s stands close together, sifting through greeting cards and ceramic mugs. At the other end of this barn-like building, in the dining room waiting area, pre-teens in colorful parkas are sprawled casually across a bench, mumbling to each other.
In the evaporating room — a chilly, high-raftered space with big windows and a cement floor — a constantly changing cast of characters shuffles around slowly. Some are eating bright white maple ice cream. Others, inevitably, are on their smartphones, texting and Instagramming behind-the-scenes shots of syrup-making. An occasional curious guest — like the man pictured above — picks up the metal scooper resting next to the large bed of steaming sap and reaches down to stir the hot stuff, just to see what happens.
A staffer calls out to the room that the wait time for brunch stands at two hours. A tired-looking woman with two toddlers puffs out her cheeks and lets out a burst of impatience.
A silver-haired woman emerges from the dining room on the arm of a tall man, “I had the waffles, and they were wonderful!” she says, passing by hungry-looking faces.
“Jackie, party of three!” the staffer calls.
I look down into the evaporator pan. The syrup ripples in the heat of the cook, flashing gold as it catches bolts of sunlight coming through the windows. Behind me, sounds of the bustling sugarhouse collect into a murmuring white noise, thick but calm, like the sweet science playing out in front of me.•
— Hunter Styles, hstyles@valleyadvocate.com
