Articles

Because, as the crow flies, I’m only a few flaps and caws from the Connecticut River, I wake up most autumn mornings to a river fog dreamscape. All the air is suffused with soft gray, as…

A steady parade of trucks loaded with gravel, cement, and dirt rumbles down Binney Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, each day. There seems to be a construction site around every corner in…

Despite decades of experience eating wild plants, I was slow to start foraging for fungi. There are many poisonous species. So many species look similar to each other. And, while almost all…

Last October, while on assignment to photograph fall foliage for The New York Times, photographer Caleb Kenna traveled north along Vermont Route 100. “As I was passing Echo Lake in…

This article is the third in a four-part series that focuses on climate change impacts and adaptation in forests. A companion series published last year focused on forest carbon. Alexandra…

Picture this: you are a single mother, and to ensure the success of your children, you’ll have to immobilize a still-living animal almost twice your weight and haul it back to a tunnel…

I had the good fortune of having Northern Woodlands in my home during my teenage years, just as I began to seek out information about the history and ecology of northeastern forests. A summer…

The summer I was 23, I lived in a treehouse in the Maine woods. My boyfriend, Curry, and I had just returned to the state after an unsuccessful attempt to start careers in Colorado, near my…

This article is the second in a four-part series that focuses on climate change impacts and adaptation in forests. A companion series published last year focused on forest carbon. Alexandra…

In 2010, my dog treed a young fisher in the woods bordering my neighbor’s Christmas tree farm. I was surprised to spot the animal in this portion of southeastern New Hampshire, within 5…

Here’s a botanical riddle: What has fruits that look like a juneberry, flowers that look like a blackberry, leaves that look like an apple, and a name that sounds like a cherry? Answer:…

Richard Silliboy, vice chief of the Mi’kmaq Nation, uses splints of brown ash (also known as black ash) to weave a basket in his studio near Houlton, Maine. Silliboy participates in the…

We know that emerald ash borer is going to kill most of the ash trees in our forest, but is there value in chemically treating a few trees – and, if so, which ones? What about the…

Recently, I taught a chainsaw safety course in which a student asked, “Where does all the bar oil go?” It occurred to me that this is a topic that gets relatively little attention,…

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for. – Georgia O’Keeffe Kathleen Robbins’ home is near…

Colorful splotches of paint cover the floor of artist Adelaide Murphy Tyrol’s studio in Marshfield, Vermont. Paint-splattered buckets are stacked beneath a large sink. Brushes of various…

For now, this girdled hourglass preserves Tree’s vertical: a monument to gnawing doubts, camel straws, tipping points and indecision by a certain whittling Beaver. After all, beneath…

As we celebrate 30 years of publication of Northern Woodlands, we also celebrate, with thanks, Elise Tillinghast’s leadership of the Center for Northern Woodlands Education for the past…

Intolerance of disturbance, specific habitat requirements, and narrow distribution: these are characteristics that threaten species with extinction. Unfortunately, the Chittenango ovate amber…

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. — Seneca (C. 4 BC–AD 65) For many observers of Maine’s forest products industry, the 18-month period between 2014 and…