Articles

A red maple tree in the backyard stretched well above the two-story house where I grew up. It was not an easy tree to climb, but it was the best one. I would jump up to grab the lowest branch…

Many of us associate bees with gardens or fields of wildflowers and are familiar with the common eastern and golden northern bumble bees we see there. However, forests also provide critical…

One floor above the taxidermied polar bears and crocodiles, in an annex adjacent to the eclectic collection of geological wonders and historical artifacts from faraway places, the Fairbanks…

At 10, I believed all rivers flowed south, pulled by gravity, down the face of a map. These many years later, such a notion seems naïve. Yet that idea – built upon a certain…

I was pushed out of my mother’s body one April, cold and wet, in the fifth season of the year. A measure of frost and mud. It was past the last sap boil, more amber than gold. I was a…

Dozens of people contribute to creating each issue of Northern Woodlands. Here are a few of the people whose work is featured in the Spring magazine. {image2} Bryan Pfeiffer (cover photograph)…

To photograph this red fox and her five kits near his home in Thetford, Vermont, without disrupting the animals, Tig Tillinghast relied on high magnification. This is one of several images he…

After the snow has melted, when the ground has just started to warm and the first hints of green have returned to the landscape, I keep an eye on the space beneath the old apple tree just…

Near the beginning of each year, Northern Woodlands Communications and Circulation Director Emily Rowe shares reports with the rest of our staff, offering a comprehensive look at website…

Winter drapes the hills around the cabin in white, softening the world and quieting its noise. The stillness of the season settles around us, inviting us to live each day with intention,…

In the last installment, we investigated a nonrunning chainsaw with low compression. The compression was so low that the chainsaw failed the “hang test” (holding the saw by the…

for Rick (1956–2022) The pine log screams as he pushes it through the saw. A portable mill because he likes to work outdoors, leaning in to northern summer sun, or weighed down with wool…

“Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will…” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and polymath, 1749–1832 Ice Cut (Violet Kennebec) is…

Dozens of people contribute to creating each issue of Northern Woodlands. Here are a few of the people whose work is featured in the Winter magazine. {image2} Adelaide Murphy Tyrol (Art…

Over the past decade, a new generation of forest “bioproducts” has emerged from university research labs in Maine, combining the natural benefits of wood with a dose of high-tech…

Old-growth forests are ecosystems distinguished by old trees and shaped by long periods of natural processes. They differ in important ways from younger forests, offering unique structures,…

If winter travels take you along the banks of a clean, rocky stream on a warm afternoon, chances are good you’ll encounter stoneflies (order Plecoptera) seeking out others of their kind…

Having honed his photography skills by focusing on warm weather findings, Brent Haglund found himself, a few winters back, searching for something to aim his camera toward during the colder…

Non-native invasive forest pests such as emerald ash borer and hemlock woolly adelgid get a lot of attention, and well deserved, for being major tree killers. There are, however, some native…

With trees covering 17.5 million acres (90 percent of the state’s landmass), Maine is the most forested state in the United States. Private landowners – corporations, institutional…