EATONVILLE, PIERCE COUNTY — Neon lines stretch across a forest thick with sword ferns, zigzagging across the landscape at about waist level.
The blue and green tubes, which sometimes flow with liquid, weave around maple trees and traverse the hillside, interconnected, like a tiny highway system. The bright colors contrast with the usual earth tones found in these forested foothills of Mount Rainier.
“It’s either forest graffiti, or it’s an art project,” said Greg Ettl, a University of Washington forest ecologist.
Sap drains through the tubes from clumps of bigleaf maples in Pack Forest, a 4,300-acre experimental forest owned and operated by the UW since the 1920s. Ettl, who oversees Pack Forest, is helping lead UW’s latest experiment to produce maple syrup from these trees.