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Articles

Bear Necessities: A Second Chance for Orphaned Cubs

Outdoor Classrooms Unmasked

Payments for Forest Carbon

This article is the last in a four-part series that focuses on forest carbon. A companion series, beginning this spring, will focus on climate change impacts and adaptation in forests.…

Trail Resilience

With all the extreme weather events we’ve been having, I’ve been seeing lots of erosion on our access roads and skid trails. I’m concerned about losing access to my land and…

Creating a Hand-Hewn Dough Bowl

Surrounded by hardwood forest in northern Vermont, I process five cords of firewood annually for my family’s use. As gratifying as this work can be, I’ve often found myself wanting…

A Winter Forecast for Crossbills

No other North American songbirds exhibit the unique bill structure, highly specialized diet, unpredictable movements, and opportunistic nesting behavior of our two crossbill species. Both the…

Mill Your Own Brainstorm Siding

Brainstorm is a style of live-edge clapboards that vary from 10 to 14 inches in width and offer a classic, rustic look. Lore suggests that brainstorm siding originated with an Adirondack…

Art Review: Dozier Bell

Dozier Bell was a philosophy major at Smith College when she discovered that visual art could represent her deep philosophical notions in a vital and expansive way. Luckily for us, she…

Sugaring with Brookfield Bees

Brookfield Bees is a small farm located in central Vermont and owned by married couple Dan Childs and Marda Donner, who moved from Philadelphia to Vermont in 2007. The farm produces honey,…

Three Cords

I think of winter’s passing not as time, but as firewood. As the weeks progress, the woodpile shrinks; every day’s fire spends a little more of what I set aside through summer. I…

Winter Fireflies

One of the year’s first insects to appear on my deck railing is the winter firefly, Photinus corrusca, which shows up on warm days throughout winter. A brown beetle with pink parentheses…

Waiting

This neighborhood fox is working his route down the broad convergence between night and morning light down the wellspring valley through the little swamp and up across the neighbors’…

A Beginner’s Guide to Foraging Etiquette

Years ago, a well-meaning woman admonished me for picking common milkweed because “the monarchs needed them.” I knew that monarch caterpillars relied on milkweed species as their…

Behind the Pages

Approximately 50 people contribute to the words and images in each issue of the magazine. Here are some of our Winter 2023 contributors. {image2} Jack Beaudoin (Lessons in Wood, page 50) lives…

Lessons in Wood

An Innovative Program Prepares a New Generation of Loggers

It has been raining all summer in northern Maine, the 10th wettest summer on record, and this Wednesday in August dawns overcast, the low gray clouds plump and threatening to overspill at any…

Bark Beetle Galleries

Have you ever wondered what makes the meandering paths etched into fallen trees and logs, just beneath the bark? Although many insects tunnel through wood, bark beetles create some of the most…

1,000 Words

While exploring the woods near his home in Ohio last year, Sam Cox came across a hollow tree he thought looked like the perfect owl nesting site. Although he didn’t find any owl sign,…

From the Center

On page 50 of this issue, you’ll find an article by Jack Beaudoin describing an intensive training program that prepares young Mainers – some only weeks out of high school –…

Learning Logging with Tory Porter

This profile of Tory Porter by Jack Beaudoin, complements Beaudoin’s feature article, Lessons in Wood, in the Winter 2023 issue of Northern Woodlands magazine. The article describes the…