Articles

Mark Baker’s friends call him Birdman, and it’s easy to see why. There’s the alertness in his dark eyes, his baseball cap with a bald eagle embroidered on its crown, and the…

Photographer Chris Mazzarella loves to capture the moment of nature in his photography, and the dispersal of cattail paracute seeds offered him the perfect opportunity to do this. "I took…

We milled a bunch of beautiful-looking white pine logs the other day and found that many boards had red rot in them. Can you tell me more about red rot? Red rot is the local name for a common…

Two wings and a prayer will carry a blackpoll warbler on a remarkable journey to South America this autumn. Well, two wings, a prayer, and the energy packed into a scoop of Ben &…

“Excuse me. Is this . . . the peak?” This query, from a perplexed tourist whose family had traveled from Italy to enjoy New England’s world-renowned foliage last fall,…

Anyone in Maine who was paying attention knew that by the end of September 1947, a forest fire was likely. There had been almost no rain during the previous 10 weeks of high summer.…

Renewable Energy with the Convenience of Fossil Fuel It’s a scene you’ve undoubtedly witnessed many times: a fuel truck lumbers up to a house, the driver attaches a hose to the…

Fresh tracks frozen in the November snowpack reveal where, earlier this morning, a doe and two fawns browsed on raspberry canes, red maple stump suckers, and selected mushrooms. Following…

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. The opposite of a republican is not a democrat, it’s an anarchist. The opposite of a beef farmer is not a vegan, but rather someone…

Along the apple’s aged bole, fall rains had tamped the burst of feathers between flattened riparian grass, but the white dots on black were unmistakable. “Downy,” my pop…

When felling trees, Plan A has the tree falling right where you want it to go. Once you hang one up, though - and even the best of us do - the game changes and it's time for Plan B. If…

When an undertaking is just too big for one person, folks tend to form groups. We’re all familiar with this in a blue collar sense – the concept of a barn raising, say. But the…

Imagine a life that smells like Christmas – that rich, deep-woods aroma of balsam that fills living rooms every December. For Jack and Wendy Newmeyer, it’s the cozy smell of…

Hidden in cattails, I was hoping to photograph moose feeding in a nearby cove. Suddenly a V-shaped wake appeared in the water and a muskrat swam vigorously towards me. The creature resembled…

Dianne Shullenberger, Yellow Peony, 12” x 11”, fabric and thread, 2006 The surprise in Dianne Shullenberger’s work is that her “paintings” are not made with…

Have you ever air-dried a stack of pine boards and wondered why some bowed and some didn’t? Or noted that perfectly constructed joints swelled to a not-so-perfect fit in the summer? Or…

Chainsaws are powerful tools, and you’ll work more quickly, safely, and efficiently if you own a good one. But with all the options out there, buying a chainsaw can be an overwhelming…

The northern cardinal, crimson and crested, is an avian icon, one of the most recognizable birds on the continent. But the rosebreasted grosbeak is also a cardinal. So is the scarlet tanager.…

Eastern hemlock is an important component of the forest. Hemlock stands provide nesting habitat for a slew of bird species, such as the blackburnian warbler, and brook trout congregate in…

I first heard about hairy-chested yeti crabs while driving home one night, listening to NPR. Robert Siegel was interviewing Alex Rogers, an Oxford biologist. Rogers led a research team that…