A while back during that invigorating January thaw, shady midday thermometer creeping toward 60, my hunting buddy and I decided to poke along through our tranquil northern hills, just looking for stuff. We weren’t far from Vermont, and the roads and bare southern exposures had the soggy suggestion of our northern neighbor in April, premature mud season in a northern Franklin County hilltown.

I had to drop my aging Toyota pickup into 4-wheel to get through one uphill rut-hole before taking a right, down a dead end, to check an orchard. Sure enough, a doe feeding on apples. She picked up her head, froze, looked straight at the vehicle and bound off as I banged a U-ie. Then we headed up the road to what had appeared all fall and early winter to be a worn, unoccupied Federal farmhouse at the dirt-road T. Come to find out, it wasn’t vacant a’tall, judging from the burly, gray-haired, coverall-clad man loading cordwood into the bucket on the front of his tractor. Good day to drop a few loads of wood through the cellar window to the furnace.

Curious and congenial under the spell of false spring, I hit the brakes, came to a stop, backed up a bit, nosed into the gravel driveway behind the tractor, departed the truck, and walked around the tractor to shoot the breeze. We wanted to chat with the man who owns the hills we sometimes hunt, has manicured them for a lifetime and, in the vernacular, knows them like the back of his hand.

We introduced ourselves and got right into it, meandering from subject to subject like a meadow brook flowing from riffle to corner pool. We talked about the land, old roads, streams and pastures; neighbors, history and family; immersed ourselves in good old-fashioned backcountry conversation stimulated by the same balmy air that had undoubtedly drawn the man to his chore.

Affable, the man imparted wisdom with a Yankee twang reminiscent of my late aunt Gladys, a spinster born before the turn of the 20th century. He wasn’t that old. Not even close. But he spoke the tongue of old-time rural New England, a charming dialect I’m quite familiar with, and happen to adore.

When we got onto the subject of deer, his interest rose like a flapjack on a hot griddle, bacon fat, of course. He didn’t care what the experts said, there aren’t the deer there used to be when he and his hunting party always had 12 hanging in the downhill shed by the third day of shotgun season, salubrious winter fare to fatten the family freezer. Then, 10 years ago, the deer disappeared. It’s improved a bit the past few years. The deer are coming back. But still, nothing like the old days.

Bears? Well, that’s another story. The man never saw a bear the first 50 years on his peaceful upland farm. Times have changed. Now they’re common. Turkeys, too. They showed up in the ’70s and have spread like multiflora rose ever since. Even moose have migrated south and taken residence, no longer a rare sight. But there aren’t the deer there once were regardless of what you read in the paper.

I took heed. You can’t beat straight talk from an old-time hilltown agronomist with no hidden agenda, or reason to fib. He was just telling it like it is, like it was, like the wildlife-science Ph.D. drawing a fat government paycheck doesn’t want to hear it. I know who to believe, and it ain’t the guy who stayed up all night in some barren, windowless corner to memorize facts, ace multiple-choice exams and get that piece of paper worthy of a giltwood frame, often fools’ gold.

Our conversation drifted to the economy, the cost of living, the price of cordwood. The farmer remembered when a cord went for 15 bucks. Now some are getting 200 and a friend says he can’t make a living at that price, which didn’t make much sense to him. He believed he could make a living at $200. But then, thinking on his feet, he quickly pulled it all into perspective. Simple math told him 100 cords would bring $20,000. Where does that get you today? Not far with the price of gas and heating oil; milk, bread, eggs and cheese, the staples. He delved deeper, figuring those fancy-pants city slickers making $100,000 a year could make a comfortable go of it. But there’s no one making that in his tiny world. Not even close, except maybe lurking real estate men.

That’s when I interjected with some flatland logic. I tried to tell him 100,000 bucks doesn’t get a family where it once did, not with a mortgage, two cars, bills, bills, bills. Even with two paychecks and a supplemental income, you fight to get by, living from check to check trying to feed and clothe the kids, keep them away from the dirty, dreadful, decaying dropout factories, a step or two away from the sparkling hilltop jail.

Bemused, he looked at me through a sun-splashed squint that suggested disagreement. Huh? Can’t make a go of it on $100,000? Must be those people don’t know how to add water to their oatmeal.

Wow!

That comment hit me like lilac scent wafting through the porch in a soft, warm breeze. Country wisdom is what they call it. Homespun stuff, better than anything you can learn from a book, or at the county jail. Maybe someone ought to explain that to the judge sentencing a harmless pothead.

We bade each other farewell before my friend and I headed for the truck to continue our ride to the ridge behind the man’s northern line. As we descended toward his lower meadow and climbed the dirt road to a neighbor’s farmstead — muddy driveway, cordwood stacked neatly, faded red sheds and barns, jagged driftwood gray along the bottom — I wanted to discuss the insightful barnyard conversation that had just transpired on the crest of that gentle hill overlooking the faraway fertile valley. I hoped my companion had appreciated as much as I our short, pleasant visit.

This hilltown squire — maybe a high school grad, perhaps not, but does it really matter — isolated in a slice of paradise known as upper Franklin County, had oozed wisdom you can’t buy at the academy. He knew exactly who he was and understood that profound sense of place formed by generations of continuous inhabitance. He could show you all his boundaries, the ancient corners, every rusty barbed-wire snare concealed on the forest floor; all the ancient hardwoods, outcroppings and boulders, the landmarks, the bubbling springs to sample and not.

Developers won’t destroy his family’s jewel, built on blood and sweat and thrifty Yankee acumen. Not a chance. He’s already taken care of that.

Sure, he likely votes the law-and-order ticket and believes in its bogeymen. But don’t expect to find him sitting at a cheesy, plastic, Wal-Mart table chawin’ on cheese dawgs, tubed filth scraped from a slaughterhouse floor. He knows better. What’d those Waltons ever do for him?

Sadly, the man’s a dying breed, vanishing from our landscape like the majestic elms and the dairies they sheltered in summer shade. When he and his ilk are gone, what’ll be left? A troubling thought; troubling indeed. Our foundation is crumbling, caving to the center. All that’ll be left is mossy rubble in a sunken depression.

Not a pleasant thought.

Horrid, in fact.