Features Archive
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Management Idea: Creating a Permanent Opening
Picture a grassy clearing in the woods, a fox pouncing on a meadow vole, a nest of baby sparrows. Picture a view of distant ridges or a nearby stream. Picture a few kids – maybe your kids or grandkids – looking up at the stars before crawling into their sleeping bags. Picture all this happening on your land. In forestry… (more)
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The Meaning of Meat: Adult-Onset Hunters Look to the Land for Sustenance
As a teenager, Deborah Perkins found hunting repulsive. During her years at Greely High School in Cumberland, Maine, she wrote a passionate essay arguing that the pursuit was morally wrong. Two decades later – now living 25 miles north, in Poland, and working as a consulting wildlife biologist – she hunts grouse, turkey, and deer. Perkins’ perspective began to change… (more)
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Camera Trapping: How to Get the Shot
My good friend, ecologist Jeff Parsons, broke trail through 16 inches of fine, fresh snow. The weather was clear, the temperature hovered in the single digits, and the January sun cast long, austere shadows across a pristine meadow that sloped gently toward the Missisquoi River. I followed about ten feet behind Jeff, staying in the deep trough his snowshoes made… (more)
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Getting to Know Bark
As the vibrant colors of fall give way to the more subtle hues of winter, tree bark becomes a focal point in the forested landscape. The splendid contrasts of bark are highlighted by the low-riding winter sun – the white, curly strips of paper birch juxtapose with the dark, burnt cornflake scales on black cherry; the furrowed ski track patterns… (more)
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Goodbye
On September 1, Steve Long will be leaving Northern Woodlands for a fellowship at Harvard Forest. Long founded the magazine with Virginia Barlow, and served as editor and executive director from 1994 to 2010. “There are hundreds of people I feel like I need to say goodbye to,” Long said recently. And so we asked him to do just that.… (more)
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Ducks, Beautiful Ducks: A Portfolio of Pintails, Woodies, and Butterballs
The beat changed more, and now they flew striking all together, so that their wings sung in unison as they went over his head. He stood stock still watching them, and long after they had passed down the sky he stood there, with the noise of their wings above his head. - Patrick O’Brian from The Dawn Flighting The late… (more)
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Counting Bears
Biologists monitor the vitality of the “living symbol of the Maine woods.” The past two days have been disappointing for state bear biologists, and today is shaping up no differently. Fifty leg snares at 37 sites have turned up exactly zero bears. “Four days ago, we had four,” says Randy Cross, bear biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries… (more)
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Three Logging Systems: Matching Equipment to the Job
Dick Lewis, of Chester, New Hampshire, has been logging since he was a teenager in the late 1950s. He started with horses and then a farm tractor, each of them pulling a scoot, a rugged sled that kept the logs off the ground. With the leverage of a peavey and a strong back, he loaded the scoot. If a horse… (more)
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Powerlines as Habitat
Significant powerline projects are in the works throughout northern New England and New York, as the grid is updated to accommodate more power from Quebec. In the pages of the local papers, residents weigh the costs and benefits, with proponents touting benign progress and opponents seeing a scar on the landscape they love. The Northern Pass proposal in New Hampshire… (more)
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A River Full of Logs
Until 80 years ago, the best way to get logs from the North Country to sawmills and paper mills in Connecticut and Massachusetts was to float them down the Connecticut River. Bringing the logs to market- in much the same spirit that cowboys herded cattle across the Great Plains- were the river drivers, a breed every bit as rugged as… (more)