One of the most memorable experiences one can have is visiting a working sugar shack.  Every one of your senses is activated:  wood smoke and humid evaporation, a sweet sneak taste on your tongue, radiant heat from the wood boiler, shafts of light on the steam.  

And a lot of hard work because once the sap is out of the trees, it must be distilled quickly or it will ferment.   So the evaporator crews often work all night to make a few gallons of maple syrup from thousands of gallons of clear sap.