The Peak Experience

My road has been discovered. Every day last week, as I drove my children home from school, there have been at least two cars parked on the side of our quiet country road. Often the cars’ occupants are nearby, taking pictures of the view.

Last week the foliage was at its peak in this part of Vermont.

I remember when I thought of foliage as simply leaves. After 13 years in Vermont, it has come to mean the changed leaves of autumn. Tourists come from all over to see it. Columbus Day weekend is one of Vermont’s busiest tourist weekends.

I will not deny that it is breath-takingly beautiful. Sugar maples turn amazing colors in fall. Sometimes pure orange. Sometimes a spectrum of yellow to orange to red in a single tree – or even a single leaf.

Centuries of logging, and a variety of habitats in close proximity give Vermont, not only plenty of sugar maples, but a diversity of tree types that is found in few other places. That makes our hills particularly colorful.

I wonder, though, how many of our leaf peepers go home with a new appreciation for trees in their own neighborhood? A single sugar maple, even one on a busy street corner, contains all the wonders of a Vermont October in miniature.

Does anyone go home inspired to spend more time in their local park? To discourage the development of that vacant lot, that contains the only stand of trees for miles?

As I see the cars parked along the road, I worry about that craving for the peak experience. I’m afraid it is one of the things that is driving our society away from true nature in all its variety and toward an ever-smaller collection of natural places, kept separate from everyday life.