On a raw late-winter afternoon in March, 10 Dartmouth students participating in an immersion program sponsored by the Sustainability Office trudged up a steep hill and into the woods, navigating an icy, rocky trail and a thin layer of fresh snow.
Members of the Sugar Crew headed for the 5-acre sugarbush across Route 10 from the Organic Farm, part of a larger forest used as a kind of living laboratory for research. Conditions for sugaring—daytime temperatures in the 40 degree range, nights below freezing—had been good.
Leading the group was Emily Sigman, a Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies PhD student in the ecology, evolution,environment, and society program who is researching the science, culture, and history of maple sugaring.
