Articles

Beechwood fires are bright and clear If the logs are kept a year. Chestnut’s only good, they say, If for long ’tis laid away. Wood as fuel has been so important for so long that it’s…

The prices reported here are those that log buyers—mostly sawmills and wholesalers—are paying for logs. Because these are prices paid for delivered wood, landowners need to adjust…

The scene opens with six women standing in a forest clearing. Chainsaws rest on the ground at their feet. Some of the women wear helmets. Some of them wear chaps. One of them (me) is staring…

Ah, mushrooms. For the wild mushroom hunter, making a fungi foray into a forest erupting with golden chanterelles, bursting with radiant oyster mushrooms, and scattered with black trumpets is…

On a crisp, early morning in October, a small group of naturalists made their way down a winding trail through an isolated state forest in Derry, New Hampshire, to visit a lone American…

John Sullivan didn’t set out to have his forest certified. He just wanted to take good care of the woods. His 300 acres near Chestertown, New York, have been in the family since 1875,…

Cold. The low-angled winter sun burning dully through a nickel-colored sky. Cold. The kind that bores into you, a stinging insect as it breaches the skin, then tingly as it fords your blood,…

At 6:00 in the morning, clouds of bloodthirsty mosquitoes hover outside the bug net on Len Reitsma’s head as he hikes through a wet forest to his field-study site. A dull light glints…

Times are tough. There’s absolutely no getting around it. Job losses, foreclosures, an anxious nation that’s holding its breath waiting to see how bad it’s going to get. Facing those…

Coarse woody debris. To most people, two of the three words in that phrase have negative connotations. Debris is the worst offender, suggesting random junk strewn about. When the debris is…

The prices reported here are those that log buyers—mostly sawmills and wholesalers—are paying for logs. Because these are prices paid for delivered wood, landowners need to adjust…

Michael Dirr, the author of my favorite horticultural book, is a rarity in that he is dubious about sycamore, which he considers to be “overplanted.” Most people love this tree…

When I was growing up in the Adirondacks, nature was my playground, and the woods behind our house was a second home. Summers were spent hiking Mount Baker or swimming and fishing in Moody…

Crown gall, the common name for Agrobacterium tumefaciens, is one of the most famous plant diseases in the world. This bacterium can cause galls in more than 600 plant species, some of which…

While chainsaws have evolved over several decades to become safer, there is no mechanical solution to the problem of fatigue. Since fatigue is a major contributor to chainsaw accidents, an…

My third-floor office window overlooks a hillside a quarter-mile south that rises steeply into Montpelier’s Hubbard Park. The slope, steep enough to discourage buildings but not trees,…

Those white paint-like bands across the bark are lichens, and they are as normal and natural a part of healthy forests as are warblers. There are several others present on this tree and…

Let’s say you’re a rational, educated person with an appreciation for nature’s ways. The summer you were 12, you went to Camp Hi-Dee-Ho, where you were introduced to the…

The dog and I have a fairly regular loop we walk. From the dooryard, we head uphill – in winter, that means we first scramble over the hard-packed snowbank at the edge of the driveway…

Fifteen winters ago, Virginia Barlow and I were hatching the idea for this publication. We were busily meeting with foresters, industry associations, environmental groups, and government…