LYNDEBOROUGH – Making maple syrup has become a high-tech industry. The newest in gleaming evaporators have numerous bells and whistles to keep track of temperature, sap density and any other factor that might be wanted. The syrup makers have a dozen grades of syrup and produce sugar, maple cream and other wonderful goodies.

Leo Trudeau of North Lyndeborough has a different perspective, more like the 1970s when he learned the business as a child, as close to the old-fashioned way as he can get.

In 1998, Trudeau bought a small house, not much more than a camp, at the end of a dirt road on the north side of Lyndeborough’s mountains.

“I’ve been making syrup here ever since,” he said.” His sap house, a three-sided shed, was open over Maple Weekend, but “for philosophical reasons,” he does not join the state-wide promotion.

Trudeau says what he does is “pretty simple. I tap the trees and boil the sap.”

He makes about 25 gallons a season and that is purely organic. He makes only a grade or two of syrup “and once in a while some sugar,” he said. His small evaporator is a 1990-era model.

He has about 200 taps, the “number of holes I drill in trees,” he said. There are from one to three taps per tree since “it takes a pretty big tree to support four.”

On Saturday, he was boiling for the eighth time this season – he started on Feb. 20.

He uses from two to three cords of wood for his evaporator, most of it waste from his small sawmill. “It’s a lot of wood.”

He’s not making as much syrup as he once did, he said, “because of climate change. The trees have changed their production.”

Although he uses sap lines, he does not use the vacuum pumps used by larger producers to compensate for the lower production. “What the trees produce naturally, I collect.” He added musingly, “You wouldn’t leave your milking machine on the cow all day, would you?”

He called his end-of-the-world location “a peaceful place to live. I’m surrounded by bob cats and moose I’ve caught on a game camera. And there’s a big bear that came out during the warm spell and didn’t go back in.” He spoke of a flock of ravens – big birds that talk to each other – and the barred owls in the evening.

“Making syrup is an exercise in humility,” he said. “I sit here, the hours go by, I think I’m alone and then there’s a hawk that flies by, or the flock of ravens. It’s a good time for contemplation.”

What he thinks about, he said, is his childhood, the beloved foster parents who raised him, how the world is now.

But, as much as he likes his isolated house, Trudeau is no hermit. A carpenter by trade, he is the town’s new building inspector/code enforcer. Blessed with what he calls “a gift of gab,” he occasionally speaks his mind at town meetings. His impassioned speech in favor of the recent improvements to Mountain Road is generally considered to have influenced many of the undecided.

Trudeau grew up in Lyndeborough, has lived most of his life there, and has been studying local history. He is considering joining the Heritage Commission, which he frequently attends. One of his many pleasures, he said, is the day per week he spends with a three-year-old grandson.

But he is passionate about conserving the maple trees and will make his syrup with them in mind, not tapping some, he said, “out of consideration of their age.”

And slow down, he says, and enjoy the world around you.