Articles

Naturalist, artist, and writer Clare Walker Leslie inspires people around the world to pay attention to the nature around them and to discover their own distinct way of reflecting and…

My students and I have pit-trapped invertebrates in Camp Johnson in Colchester, Vermont, annually since 2006. We sink liquid-filled plastic tubes into the ground to intercept forest-floor…

An interview with David Montague, president of the Downeast Lakes Land Trust The Downeast Lakes Land Trust was one of the first organizations in the Northeast to conserve land using carbon…

Winter has traditionally been a productive time of year for the forest products industry in the Northeast. Landowners schedule timber harvests in the winter season to take advantage of frozen…

Whose Mouth Do I Speak With? I can remember my father bringing home spruce gum. He worked in the woods and filled his pockets with golden chunks of pitch. For his children he provided this…

In the Kingdom of October, early morning fog wraiths hang upon hardwood hillsides of burnt orange and smoldering gold. Overgrown apple orchards, each tree bent and hag twisted by the pitiless…

Ying Li paints out of doors most of the time, but her work is not what comes to mind when one thinks of “en plein air” painting. Historically, the plein air approach was…

The cricket sang, And set the sun, And workmen finished, one by one, Their seam the day upon. Emily Dickinson No matter where one lives in the Northeast, the song of the cricket serves as both…

“I first put my boots on the ground in the Maine Woods in 1965,” explained Roger Merchant. “Like this wood turtle, the going was slow and deliberate.” He photographed…

A quarter-century after the publication of their landmark book The Northern Forest, two writers return to a changed landscape - and find hope in a conservationist committed to local solutions.…

Climate change is bringing warmer and wetter conditions to the Northeast, with many implications for the forest products industry. An unpredictable winter season requires flexibility, and…

I’ve developed an intermittent habit of gathering birdsong in the morning. It began on holiday visits to my childhood home in western Massachusetts after I moved to Maine in 1998. The…

Animal sign is all around. Nipped vegetation, chewed bark, animal runs and burrows. Are you in a field, spruce, hemlock, hardwood forest? It’s a whole universe out there, and you can…

Lately, citizen scientists, gardeners, and outdoor enthusiasts of all types have become increasingly concerned with recorded declines in pollinating insect populations. From the Pollinator…

The American landscape has been altered more by the axe than by any other tool. It is estimated that more than 300 million acres of timber were cut prior to the advent of the chainsaw in the…

In the Summer 2020 issue, we feature two poems from Norwich University professor Sean Prentiss’ debut book of poetry, Crosscut. Here, Prentiss reflects on hand tools, the gifts and…

I was 22 and volunteering with an amphibian monitoring project that summer. Standing along a roadway in the woods of Sumner, Maine – armed with a clipboard and a headlamp – I…

When the Wild River Wilderness in the White Mountain National Forest was designated in 2006, wilderness management policy called for removal of all man-made structures. The Blue Brook Shelter,…

Museum of Hand Tools Nine hours after we start, Strings bellows, Tool count. Everyone halts in mid-swing & lays tools upon trail as if at a museum of hand tools. We count & re-count…

Amidst the historic homes, posh estates, and manicured lawns of southwestern Connecticut, a new, almost radical, movement is gaining strength. In a growing number of Fairfield County…