Behind the Pages

Will Close is an artist, designer, educator, and wildlife tracker who specializes in the intersection of nature, art, design, and teaching. He holds a degree in fine art painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and studied wildlife track and sign under Dan Gardoqui and Daniel Hansche. To create the watercolor illustrations for “Naming Conifers” (Knots & Bolts), Will relied on field guides – including the classic Golden Guides – online references, and a trip to the spruce-laden forests of Maine to research the nuances between Picea rubens, P. mariana, and P. glauca. Will resides in Concord, Massachusetts, where he is an outdoor education instructor with Carroll School in Lincoln and maintains an artistic studio practice (in this photo he is working on a notecard featuring a great horned owl). His passion for nature illustration, tracking, and sharing these with others has taken him from the forests of Maine to the Ecuadorian Amazon. Most recently, he was the inaugural artist-in-residence with North County Land Trust in north central Massachusetts. Photo by Claire Neid.

Dozens of people contribute to creating each issue of Northern Woodlands. Here are a few of the people whose work is featured in the Autumn magazine.

From left: Loren Merrill, Amy Godine, Katherine Emery, and T.C. Mazar.

Loren Merrill (Discoveries, page 68, and “American Woodcock” in Knots & Bolts) is a wildlife photographer and science writer with a PhD in animal behavior, evolutionary biology, ecology, and physiology. His background in research is augmented by almost five decades of natural history experiences and observations. Loren grew up in New England, and after three decades of working and traveling across North America and the globe, he has returned to the Northeast. He currently splits time between Millbrook, New York, and Maine. Courtesy of Loren Merrill.

Amy Godine (“The Gift of Access: An Adirondack Story,”) is an independent scholar, regional historian, and author of The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier (Cornell University Press, 2023), the first comprehensive history of the Black Adirondack antebellum farm settlement known as Timbuctoo. Amy has been writing and lecturing about Adirondack ethnic and Black history for 30 years. From Saratoga Springs, New York, she is the curator/writer of the Dreaming of Timbuctoo exhibition at John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba, New York. Photo by Jesse Godine.

Katherine Emery (“The Evolution of Maine’s Forest Bioproducts Industry,”) is a full-time freelance photographer specializing in portraiture and documenting meaningful stories of connection – between people and nature – that shape our communities and our future. She lives on Mount Desert Island in Maine with her family and is a member of Women Photograph. In addition to Northern Woodlands magazine, her photos have appeared in Down East magazine, Yankee magazine, and The Maine Monitor. Photo by Tessa Kane.

T.C. Mazar (“A Small Stretch of River,” A Place in Mind) is a freelance writer and International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) Board Certified Master Arborist who lives and works in northeastern Pennsylvania. He finds great joy in searching for a deeper understanding of nature through outdoor adventures with his family, the closer to home the better. Robert Kimber, a longtime contributor to the magazine, is one of T.C.’s favorite authors, both in subject and style, so he said having his work published in Northern Woodlands is “quite special.” Courtesy of T.C. Mazar.