Outside Story - Archive
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Is Wood the “Greenest” Kind of Heat?
November 19, 2007
We’ve taken down the window screens and fired up our two woodstoves now that more seasonable weather has settled in. We burn about six cords of wood each winter on our farm, a fact that I have always included on the “green” side of our environmental ledger. By burning wood, we’re not burning oil, and by not burning oil, we’re …
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Waiting for Wolves
November 11, 2007
In October 2006, Charlie Hammond, a resident of Troy, Vermont, shot what he thought was a coyote in a field. Turns out, the animal weighed 90 pounds, about twice as much as the average Vermont coyote. It had several characteristics, including a long muzzle, slanted eyes, and a black nose pad, that suggested it could be a wolf. State wildlife …
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Eels on a Slippery Slope
November 04, 2007
American eels were once an important food source for the Abenaki peoples of New Hampshire and Vermont. When autumn arrived eels were captured in stone weirs as they migrated down river. Traps consisted of two short lines of rocks that met in the shape of a “V” pointing downstream. An eel pot – a round basket with a wide mouth …
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Woodland Artillery
October 28, 2007
We’ve been transforming a small wilderness behind our house into a rock garden. Clearing away litter revealed a tiny, unusual fungus I’ve wanted to find for years.
The Greek word for cup, kyathos, describes this little cup-shaped fungus, called Cyathus. Dozens were growing on a stump between stalks of moss, each looking just like a miniature cup nestled in …
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Feels Like Ticks
October 21, 2007
With two daggers extending from each foot, ticks are well armed. And they are endlessly patient. Swaying on a blade of orchard grass, a tick extends its questing legs and waits. Night and day, through rain and drought, the tick remains poised to smell the coffee and leap. Well, more accurately, the tick waits to sense butyric acid and drop. …
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In Honor of Dead Trees
October 14, 2007
A friend of mine told me about a hedgerow he liked to visit that was a short distance from his home. It was a spot he checked regularly with his binoculars, searching for the many birds he knew he could often find there – chickadees, woodpeckers, bluebirds, and swallows. The hedgerow held several snags, the name naturalists use for dead …
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Common Ways that Plants Deter Our Meddling
October 07, 2007
The next time you wander into a patch of stinging nettles, or contract a bad case of poison ivy, try to see things from the plant’s point of view. Our green neighbors get picked, eaten, infected, and uprooted by any number of organisms, including people, insects, fungi, bacteria, viruses, and countless other herbivores and diseases. What’s a plant to do?
more...
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The Bat Swarm
September 30, 2007
I am sitting in the dark at the mouth of a cave. My knees are drawn up, and my heels are hooked over a slab of a rock to stop me from tumbling forward on the steep slope. If I stretched out my arms, my hands would touch the wide slats of a metal gate across the cave’s entrance.
I …
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American Elm Revival
September 23, 2007
For shade, for stature, for sheer physical grace in the tree world, nothing beats an American elm. The first colonists in New England took notice of this native hardwood tree’s qualities and brought it forth from the woods to grace their streets and town greens. That idea caught on, and elms - from the Liberty Tree of Boston (our first …
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Poison Ivy
September 17, 2007
“Leaves of three, let it be.“ What elementary school child doesn’t know this couplet, about one of the most dreaded plants in our New England landscape, poison ivy? At this time of year, the three green leaves start turning shades of yellow and red, joining in the fall foliage show.
Many of us still remember our first, itchy encounter with …
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