Blog and News

This winter, a barred owl has been loitering around my house. My husband arbitrarily declared it a male (there’s no easy way to sex an owl) and we dubbed him Squinty McBold.…

If you were to describe deep, January cold to someone who’d never experienced it before, you might point out that you can hear it. Get below zero and the snow starts to squeak under…

Editors Dave Mance and Patrick White are holed up in their offices this week, working away on final drafts for the Northern Woodlands spring issue. So now seemed a good time to stage a blog…

On the seventh of December, men stood in the garage and said: “Yep, snow before Pearl Harbor Day; it’s gonna be a good winter.” Then, armed with electrical cords, blow…

I went through a wicked dinosaur phase in my pre-teen years, and was convinced that if my future as an NFL quarterback didn’t materialize I’d make a lateral career move and become…

My old boss Walter Medwid recently published this op-ed raising the issue of Fish and Wildlife funding in Vermont. It’s a wonky issue, I’ll grant you, but it’s something that…

Vermont's deer rifle season opens Saturday, which means our editor was distracted all week at work before finally disappearing Thursday night. Why the early start? This essay from 2009…

The lab (okay, garage) here at Northern Woodlands was the scene last week of some high-tech testing. Using the latest in scientific hardware – a small glass vial purchased on Amazon for…

As I write this I’m listening to a tractor trailer back up to the office; it’s here to deliver the first shipment of our new seasonal nature calendars. I have a sample on my desk,…

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is...For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” -…

This October 17-19th, on the shores of Lake Morey, authors, editors, educators and nature enthusiasts will gather for a weekend conference focused on writing about the nature of our region,…

Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom recently adopted a new advertising slogan that urges visitors to “Embrace a Change of Pace.” If I were the ad exec I would have shortened it to…

There’s this recurring debate every election cycle about whether we need more or less government in our lives. And it’s never going to end because most of us are conflicted on the…

As I crested the hill, I raised my head and hit the brakes. Standing in the road just 40 feet in front of me was a female moose. In a car, this sort of experience is terrifying. But I was on a…

If you’re into nature, you may also be into skulls. And if you’re into skulls, you’ve probably struggled with skull processing. To do it right you need a terrarium and some…

If you find the sight of blissful ignorance in the face of near-death entertaining – and I think in this case most of you will – check out this video of a hapless (though kind of…

One of the hazards of working at Northern Woodlands is that people are constantly asking you tricky nature questions. There I’ll be, happily moseying along a trail and someone will…

For those of you who aren’t following the battle to ban bear baiting in Maine, here’s a quick recap. The Humane Society of the United States and a coalition of smaller local animal…

This April, as part of Northern Woodlands’ spring fundraising effort, we published a quiz with nine mystery photos and challenged readers to identify any three of them in a line…

Red and Georgia were sitting on the lip of a Long Trail lean-to together, while the rest of us were massed on a nearby picnic table eating lunch. Red was a 20-something Irish-looking kid with…