GRP Creature Feature: Living Embers of the Valley

Taking a stroll down the main walkway of basecamp, feeling the cool breeze coming down through the valley with the dappled light streaming down through the trees, one might be struck with the strangest sight - a tiny ember trotting through the moist grass, pausing only to tilt it’s head up as it finds a beam of sunlight and then opting to sidle on by it, all the while utterly unaware of how striking the sight is.

This remarkable creature is the Red Eft, one of the most prevalent amphibians to be found in the Green River Valley. They can be easily identified by their aforementioned fiery colors, being bright red or orange with barely-visible black circles along their back.

The term “red eft” is actually a descriptor for the life stage of the newt, where, after emerging from their aquatic larval stage, they lose their gills and become terrestrial, adventuring out across the forest floor to find their new homes in far off ponds and streams.

In the Green River Valley, we are lucky enough to have a bustling population of Red Efts, and luckier still to have them living right up alongside our campers; they can be found all throughout basecamp, from the edges of the Wetlands where they emerge from the water, young and ready to explore, or even curled up under damp firewood, where their coloration has campers marveling at the “Living Embers” that were born from old campfires.

These tiny dragons are an iconic part of camp, representing at once a fraction of the biodiversity that can be found in the valley, and also an example of how complex and fascinating a single organism can be as campers watch the efts reach adulthood.

Returning to the water, the Red Efts undergo a final transformation into their final adult life stage: that of the Eastern Newt! They lose the bright red, gaining a green-tinted brown coloration but retaining the black spots from their younger stage. Their tails grow big and angular like the oars of a canoe.

But even in this stage, the newts don’t leave us. Rather, they become a fixture of our lake, and a continued fascination for our campers. Despite being nearly fully aquatic again, they still come up for air, and that’s where our campers find themselves enraptured watching the littlest lake monsters of camp pop up and create ripples on the surface of the water.

Story by Fletch Gilrain