Articles

While on a late-spring hike, photographer Frank Kaczmarek came across a bald-faced hornet nest that had dislodged from a tree. He took out his camera and captured these new adults emerging…

How conservation groups got into managing forestland, and the lessons they've learned. The Maine Chapter of the Nature Conservancy never planned to get into the forestry business. All it…

I’ve been lucky enough to have met a lot of interesting people in my life. I’ve known some wonderful characters in the New York film business, and I’ve traveled the world to…

Chainsaws, despite their blunt appearance, are precision tools that need to be carefully maintained to work properly. The chain is no exception to the rule. There are two parts to maintain on…

The transition from late winter to early spring is my favorite time for wildlife photography. The warming snow pack is pock-marked with tracks everywhere; some creatures are seeking mates,…

While it’s pretty audacious to reduce the Northeast, a region with hundreds of unique ecosystems, to three generalized parts, if pushed, you can do it. There’s the North Woods,…

Among the many priorities crowding school budgets, environmental education often gets short shrift. Many educators see the value of bringing more nature into the classroom, but the reality of…

We’re used to tracking spring’s progression through flowers (colt’s foot to purple trillium to columbine) or bird sightings (phoebes to sapsuckers to warblers). Spend time…

If you’re considering building a log structure, you’ll need to learn to scribe logs. In most cases, you’ll be scribing for a saddle notch, used to join two logs…

Ask a group of foresters, tree farmers, or loggers how to promote American beech, and there will likely be a pause, a few grins, perhaps a chuckle or two, and then, the faint sound of…

“Dead wood coming down.” “All clear, Bear.” “Thanks!” THUD. A dead oak branch crashes to the ground after a brief but thorough exchange between two…

My friend John the blacksmith lent me an old book, A Natural History of Trees, by Donald Culross Peattie, which is both quaint and authoritative. Maybe it’s this combination of…

The feeding habits of porcupines are far more diverse than many people realize. Cambium, phloem, foliage, buds, flowers, fruits, and nuts comprise the mainstay of Erethizon dorsatum’s…

In winter at Halibut Point, a rocky headland on the Massachusetts coast, the drama begins at dawn. A stout gust rips the white from whitecaps and sprays the shore with ice that tinkles like…

Management Stories From North America's Northern, Northern Woodlands When I say “northern Quebec” to most people, I either get blank looks or they say something vague about how…

Walking through our old Christmas tree plantation, the fragrance of balsam fir evokes memories of dragging freshly cut trees to the baler, riding on the top of a wagon full of trees, and…

Of the billions of trees in the Northeast, I’ve known maybe 50 well, maybe 10 with a draw-from-memory intimacy. The apple trees I prune each year in the yard, for instance, or the sugar…

A few years back, we had some family friends over for a cookout. One of them looked up at the long, straight rows of Christmas trees growing on our hillside in the distance. “It looks…

I heard about Joe Wheelwright before I knew him – that’s the natural order of things in a small town. “There’s this guy out in East Corinth who turns trees into…

Those of us who live in the Northeast are familiar with the vicissitudes of winter. We know firsthand that not every day sparkles with rime ice or delivers fluffy drifts of sun-dappled snow.…