'White Mountain Mikey' Dupree. (Shannon Mullen, NHPR)
The state tourism office says "White Mountain Mikey" Duprey is one of their most committed leaf-peepers.
He's a character, they said, quite the comedian.
So Mikey took me for a ride through part of the region he reports on.
Dupree: "Now this is a funny sign, what does that say?"
Mullen: "Moose crossing."
Dupree: "Moose crossing next 2 miles, you know... what’s funny about that? Moose don’t read!! They cross anywhere they damn well please… oh we’re getting some nice colors here, some nice oranges here..."
Mikey reports on the fall colors from Plymouth to Lincoln - but the foliage was still developing there.
So he couldn't resist showing off the scenery farther north, where it was already pretty well established.
So, we headed toward North Conway, down that old mountain highway with the name no one seems to get right.
Dupree: "People pronounce it kanka-MANG-us, there’s no G, it’s not KAN-GA-MANG-GUS, it’s the can-ka-maugus hwy, it’s an Indian name."
Mullen: "What does it mean?"
Dupree: "Um, body of water in a high place, (he’s kidding) no I’m sorry that’s Winnipesaukee. (laughs) I believe Kancamaugus was an Indian chief… very nice guy, although I never met him, he was gone before I got here (laughs)."
Along the Kank, the sugar and swamp maples were glowing firetruck red, and hunting-vest orange.
The tamaracks and birches were showing yellows and golds.
And more color comes out every day.
So twice a week, Mikey and New Hampshire's other official leaf peepers check out the colors in their regions.
White Mountain Mikey and the state's other volunteer leaf-peepers track foliage for the state tourism office. (Shannon Mullen, NHPR)
And they assign them a number from one to seven on the state's official foliage color scale.
"Number 1 is all green... all green, number 2 is just turning, up to 25 percent showing color… number 5 is at-peak, 75 percent showing color, as you can see this is very complicated, number 6 is past peak, and number 7 is faded, foliage has lost all color and all the leaves have fallen, too late, next year. (laughs)"
The state tourism office takes the reports by e-mail, and posts them on its website.
All the official leaf peepers across the state are volunteers.
Mikey does his part while he's traveling for his job delivering brochures for the tourism agency "White Mountain Attractions."
He also does the company's public relations, and guides bus tours, because - if it's not already obvious - he loves to talk and tell stories.
But he wasn't always so outgoing.
He says, as a kid, he was kind of recluse, and he wasn't sure what he wanted from life.
But he knew it wasn't a job in the local mills.
"My father and his family worked in factories in Nashua all their lives… I don’t want to work in a building where there’s no windows, where you have to work from midnight to 8. And god bless those people that can do those kinds of things."
A job at the visitors' center in Nahsua gave him a taste of what it would be like to work in tourism.
And he liked it.
So he moved a hundred miles north to where there were more tourist attractions, and he got a job with the company he works for now.
His first bachelor pad was a trailer in North Woodstock.
"And I don’t want to say the trailer was small, but I could sit on the couch, rest my feet on the bed, and flush the toilet all at the same time, it was so small they call it a tray, it was so small I had to go outside to change my mind… (laughing) it was really small, but it was home!"
Mikey was in his 20's, still just dropping off brochures and talking to business owners.
But it was the first time in his life that he was reaching out to people, and he liked making them smile.
"I kinda like made myself this character, I made the character White Mountain Mikey, and that’s how everybody knows me up here."
And he's not kidding - everybody knows him.
On the last leg of the drive, Mikey took a narrow back road, and got stuck behind a tractor.
"Hey John, I know that guy… His family used to own Hilliard’s Candy. I’m just going to roll down my window. (yells) I thought you were in Lincoln… (tractor guy: you never know where you’re going to find me… talking/tractor noise) ok! (tractor pulls away) Now see Shannon, that is why I am who I am, because I know everybody, and I say hi to everybody, I’m not a stick in the mud, I’m not trying to be somebody I’m not, I mean – he was just driving down the road and now he says, hey I just saw mikey – isn’t that what life’s all about?"
Mikey just turned 54, and he's been living up here for thirty years.
White Mountain Mikey visits the White Mountains. (Shannon Mullen, NHPR)
But he still gets excited in the fall, when the leaves start turning.
And part of what keeps it new is watching the tourists' faces when they see the fall colors for the first time.
"Just when you think you’ve seen the prettiest clump of trees, the prettiest colors, it’s like 'oo ah, ooh ah.' Look at those oranges right here."
Mikey says the frosting on the cake is when it snows on the presidential range, around the time the foliage is peaking.
"You can always tell the difference between the tourists who are coming out here from the west and the Midwest, and the locals, cause the tourists’ll see the snow on the mountains, and they’ll say 'oh, that is soooo beautiful,' and the locals are saying, 'oh not yet!' It’s a sign of things to come."
Mikey predicts the real snow is still a ways off.
For now, all the locals have to put up with is some extra traffic from all those unofficial leaf-peepers.
For NHPR News, I'm Shannon Mullen.
