Altitudinal Threads
Going Uphill
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The light green creeps up the mountain with each passing day. I call this green “turkey green.” Not because turkeys are green, but because it occurs most poignantly during the best days of turkey season.
Do turkeys follow the green? Not in my experience. If they did, they’d be down low in the valley where time is sped up. Some stay up high in the greys and browns of winter, dry patches of forest that are warm, but not lush. They scratch for bugs and nuts.
Vermont turkeys share a similar history with other big game species (like deer), having been eliminated and then brought back. The original turkey genes are likely gone, but those of today’s birds are good enough for year-round survival. As settlers cleared land, turkeys were killed off or lost habitat by the 1850s. One hundred years later, the introduction of a domesticated breed into the wild by a private group was unsuccessful, but 17 captured New York birds were released in southern Vermont, seeding today’s healthy population of 50,000.
It’s warmer down low, so if you want to be colder, go high. And this time of year, the distinction is noticeable because of the plants. From afar, the green is halfway up a 1800-foot ridge. The top remains winter brown (or more accurately, deer brown).
It’s a succession of elevations. Miss your chance to pick fiddleheads in the flatlands or river plain? Walk uphill, and you’ll still find them barely busting through the ground, fronds hoping to unfurl. Many New Englanders and Maritimers love this vegetable, but it is unofficially New Brunswick’s provincial vegetable. Vermont politicians tried unsuccessfully to make it theirs in 1985 during the fiddlehead war.
In this way, walking uphill is like time-traveling. Not only plants, but birds, bugs, and frogs follow an altitudinal cadence as well.
It’s colder up high, especially in springtime. The sounds that emerge from woods and water change with altitude; frogs’ voices warm up, and insect song adapts accordingly. Hear a cricket? How many chirps in 13 seconds? Add 40, and that will be close to the air temperature in Fahrenheit.
