Skip to Navigation Skip to Content
Decorative woodsy background

Articles

Amphibian Eggs in Vernal Pools

If you peer into the waters of a vernal pool in early spring, you may see the eggs of several amphibian species that use this special habitat to reproduce. But which eggs belong to which…

Behind the Pages

Approximately 50 people contribute to the words and images in each issue of the magazine. Here are some of our Spring 2023 contributors. {image2} Conrad Baker (“Autism Nature…

From the Center

Until we began working on this issue of the magazine, I had no idea that spotted salamanders are individually distinguishable by their spots. But they are, and what you see below are five…

An Introduction to Forest Carbon

Readers often express interest in forests’ capacity to absorb and store carbon, and in climate-friendly management practices. In this first installment of a four-part series supported by…

Wood Lit

All in the Family at Robbins Lumber

Cedar Swamp Magic

On my family’s 80-acre Christmas tree farm in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom was a large swamp populated by northern white cedar trees. The swamp was at the base of Mount Monadnock,…

Art Review: Carolyn Egeli

Carolyn Egeli is a painter’s painter. As the daughter of two successful artists, she was classically trained at home from a young age, as were her four siblings. But Egeli notes that for…

Eidolon

in memory of George MacArthur I stared at a lone white cedar this morning, astonished, so few of that height and girth left standing from when they were hewn by hand for railroad ties by…

Green Long-jawed Spiders

Winter rambles often take me to East Woods in South Burlington, Vermont. While birders gaze skyward, I find myself drawn to movement on the ground. Snow cover reduces invertebrate numbers, and…

Creating a Climate-Resilient Forest at Tug Hill

Just east of Lake Ontario and west of the Adirondacks lies the Tug Hill Plateau, a chunk of sedimentary rock that rises from an elevation of 250 feet at its base near the lake to 2,100 feet on…

Mount Washington Observatory: Measuring the “World’s Worst Weather”

Rising to an elevation of 6,288 feet, Mount Washington caps New Hampshire’s Presidential Range and is the highest peak in the Northeast. On a clear summer day, hordes of visitors flock…

Waxwings: Itinerant, Unpredictable Winter Jewels

Jays, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, juncos, cardinals – these are the staple birds of winter, familiar to nearly all feeder watchers in the Northeast. In some years, nomadic finches…

Working Lands Aid At-Risk Species

How Private Lands Can Provide Critical Wildlife Habitats

Back in the 1980s, I began a long-term project with New England cottontails to explore the causes of their regional decline and how that situation could be reversed. I found that cottontails…

What’s This Tool For? A Look at Logging Tools of Yesteryear

Axes and crosscut saws have survived in the American mind as evidence of our utilitarian relationship with forests. Most of the crosscut saws I see today are hung above mantles or serve as a…

Using Terrestrial Lidar for Accurate Forest Carbon Inventories

The world’s forests are an essential site of carbon sequestration and storage. As nations work to achieve “net zero” emissions in the coming decades, detailed estimates of…

1,000 Words

Jackie Robidoux captured this great blue heron pair during a late winter snowstorm in Horse Hill Nature Preserve in Merrimack, New Hampshire. A photographer and wildlife rehabilitator,…

The Roots of Root Beer

Soft drinks are the very model of industrially processed food. No one is surprised that they contain artificial colors, flavors, and sweeteners. But people might be surprised that root beer,…