![]() ![]() The sugar maple also is the backbone of three industries considered vital in Vermont and elsewhere in New England - furniture-making, syrup production and tourism. Its mysterious chemistry makes some hillsides look like rumpled Persian carpets and some sugar maples look as if they are afire. The grey-barked Acer saccharum, which grows from southern Canada to North Carolina, is the star of the fall foliage show. Aside from its place in the natural order, the sugar maple is a virtual icon of Vermont, like the Holstein cow. This spring, the thrip attack was blunted, for reasons no one quite understands. Studies were launched, blue-ribbon commissions were appointed and individual trees were nursed to health. The devastation caused by the thrip touched off alarms. In the spring of 1988, many trees, especially sugar maples, were hard hit by the "pear thrip," a tiny insect that eats the maple's buds in spring. Maples and the other trees of the New England countryside have gotten a flurry of attention in the past year or so. The maples are now dying faster than they're growing," said Miller, whose family has been farming and tapping maple trees on this hill for more than 200 years. "The best trees my dad used to make syrup from are now dead. Fifteen or 20 years ago, he said, the crown of a healthy tree would block out the sky. Miller, 30, is seeking a scientific explanation for what he and other farmers call "the decline" or "the die-back." Taking time from the press of fall chores, he gestured to the crown of one of thousands of sugar maples on his land and pointed out the blue sky visible through the upper branches. "All we have now are sick and sicker," Miller said one day recently, and he wants to know why. ![]() His trees, and all of those that he can see for miles, are dying. But, in Miller's opinion, the beauty of the scene is misleading. From where he stands, in the muddy parking lot outside the family's fruit-packing shed, Miller can see beyond the orchard to the swells of hillsides rolling eastward to the Connecticut River and into New Hampshire. Along the dirt road, just behind a stone fence, stand rows of sugar maples, the source of maple syrup and the lure that brings leaf-peeping tourists every fall. In the orchard are apples and pears, and all around in the hills are pines, oaks and birches. The apples hang heavy on the trees, the sun is shining and, down below, the sheep are in the meadow. On the drive up to his property in southeastern Vermont, there is no obvious sign to suggest that, as Miller sees it, something is seriously amiss. Read Miler is a worried man, even for a farmer. ![]()
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