Seeing Red -- and Thriving on It

I still remember the magic of picking up that first maple leaf from the wet grass beside the trail through Stowe. It was mid-November -- a full month past the prime of foliage season -- and the drizzly mornings of late had flattened and pressed this one into a remnant carpet of others. But on that crisp Vermont afternoon this dewy specimen may as well have been the Holy Grail. Even after who-knew-how-long on the ground; even after rain and footsteps and approaching decay, it was beautiful. The fact that it was the first day of my honeymoon may have added some of the magic, but holding between my fingers this icon of autumn was a glory all its own.

We returned the following year for our first anniversary -- this time in early October, the "4th of July" of Fall. If that single leaf the prior year had been the pop of a champagne cork, this was atomic bombs -- one mountainside after another exploding with color. Unspeakable, breathtaking beauty.

We have returned in more recent years, but not in the glory of Autumn. Our schedules have other demands on their minds during that time of year. But simply crossing the state line -- even in late December -- feels like a deep breath of the soul. There are memories there -- visions of glory; God's palette on steroids.

You can understand, then, what a personal pain it was -- what a deep and reverberating silence it is -- to come across an article in the new Yankee Magazine about one more perfidious effect of global warming. Sugar maples, "the official state tree of Vermont and the unofficial symbol of fall calendars everywhere" become scarce as one drives southward into warmer climates. "By Connecticut they've given way almost completely to the oak and hickory forests that also distinguish the southern Appalachians. Some climate models "predict that within a couple of centuries, the climate of Vermont and New Hampshire will be more like Virginia's today -- and gone will be maple sugaring and the signature colors of the New England autumn."

I suppose I can imagine a world without sugar maples in Autumn, but I'm not sure quite why one would want to live in it. Red leaves in Vermont represent just one more reason why we'd better start paying attention to what we are doing to the environment. Sooner, rather than later -- while there are still leaves to turn and glow and fall.