I went to a group-think exercise the other day where participants were asked to envision what the landscape in Vermont would look like 40 years from now under various scenarios. It was my…

Like a lot of kids who grew up rural, I was introduced to many of the wonders of nature through hunting. Specifically squirrel hunting, which is how most kids get their start. I don’t do…

Mr. Trefry was my seventh grade industrial arts teacher and an avid fisherman. He showed me how to cast lead jigs, which I used over the years to catch a pile of perch. Trefry was paranoid…

Spend time in northern Maine, and you’ll likely get an earful of two seemingly incompatible complaints. The first is the scarcity of jobs. The shuttering of the Verso mill in Bucksport…

G and I were out for a walk the other night, talking about and wondering why the sky has been so beautiful for the last month. Evening after evening of just impossible grandeur. Every night…

We’re doing a big story on white pine blister rust in the Autumn issue, and in tracking down art for the piece came across a cool old type-written report on eastern white pine that was…

The birch bark peelers arrived in a pickup pulling a covered trailer. There was a 4-wheeler in it, a smaller trailer, and sheets of cardboard and stickers for the bark. They unloaded the…

I went on vacation this past week down to southern Massachusetts, a place that’s really a different world to a guy from Vermont: the land flat or gently rolling towards the sea; the…

I’ve been trying to line things up to build a house for a few years now, and am getting nowhere fast. I’ve made some recent progress milling hardwood, though, that I’ll…

It’s often implied, if it’s not said outright, that nature is a cruel, cold place. We’ve all seen trees wrapped around each other fighting for light; late frosts that leave…