We’ve boiled twice since my last blog post, and both times were in support of pretty minor runs. Our season total is 67 gallons of syrup, which puts us at about 8 percent of a crop. Last…

As our sugaring operation grows, it gets harder to tell where one season ends and the next begins. From a production standpoint, last season ended on April 9, 2013, which is a logical place to…

We hear all the time about how winter’s disappearing in this era of climate change (The New York Times recently ran a piece called “The End of Snow?”), so I can’t help…

I flew out of Albany, New York, the other day. It was nice and clear and you could look down and see the sprawl – the ordered, grid-like subdivisions from the 1950s immediately around…

One of the best things about winter is the sunsets. In the summertime, when the air’s soupy and thick, the horizon is often fuzzed out by a skein of haze. The sunsets can be nice, sure,…

One of the ways we try to differentiate ourselves from the traditional environmental media is by looking at things evenly. For example, a press release showed up in my inbox the other day with…

Thanks to everyone at Northern Woodlands for the warm welcome I’ve received as the magazine’s new assistant editor. It’s a personal and professional pleasure to be working…

Environmental scientist Robert Cabin pointed out recently in a story that ran in Earth Island Journal that political liberals in general, and environmentalists in particular, can put an…

There are three weekends of rifle season in Vermont, and as such the season unfolds in acts, like a play. We opened the first act on Friday night, the boys arriving in camp at various times…

One of the hardest parts of writing, or any creative endeavor, is knowing when to crinkle up the paper and start over again. The novelist William Faulkner called this killing your darling.…