Blog and News

The word senescence, a fancy term that biologists use to refer to the process of growing old, has recently entered my vocabulary, and judging by the steady rate at which my nose hair has…

Trout season opened recently in most of the Northeast, and in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d share a fishing story in this week’s blog that I wrote in 2006. Good luck to…

Editor’s Note: As those of you who have followed this sugaring season journal over the past two seasons are well aware, it’s hard for me to keep things in real time. During big…

Ice fishing. The sky’s the color of grungy nickels. The wind is picking up. A bottle is produced from the inside pocket of a wool hunting coat to ward off the morning chill. I…

We took a break from the pre-sugaring-season woods work last weekend and went to the annual Vermont Maple Sugarmakers’ Association (VMSMA) conference in Bellows Falls. It’s always…

Four years ago, I built an owl box. I built it for barred owls, Strix varia, inspired by the lovelorn hooting that erupted several nights after a February thaw. Who cooks for you? Who cooks…

In August, New York State officials announced that the state will purchase 69,000 acres of former Finch-Pruyn lands in the Adirondacks. Those lands must be classified under the state’s…

We marked around 80,000 feet of marginal- to low-grade white pine in our woods recently, and the first jag – about half – has been cut and shipped north to Canada. The truckers…

Hi all - So things are good up in the North Woods. We hung two bucks the first weekend, courtesy of my brothers, Trevor and Brendan. The weather has been less than perfect for hunting, so we…

I took a walk before the rain from Sandy started early Monday morning. You could feel the low pressure and see an unusual pallor in the sky even in southern Vermont. One year and change past…

There were a series of public meetings this week in Vermont concerning a new industry-wide maple syrup classification system that will affect the whole Northeast. As it stands, each state has…

In the midst of like-minded company, like here in this blog, I often speak of the “woodlot” – the place my family goes to, among other things, cut firewood, make maple…

Editor’s Note: We recently hired Elise Tillinghast to be our new Executive Director. Those of you who live in the Upper Valley may know her from her work in area non-profits; regular…

It’s human nature to categorize, to organize, to put things in boxes. Take seasons. Conventional wisdom holds that Labor Day weekend is the last weekend of summer, and thus we are now…

The Center for Northern Woodlands Education is pleased to announce that Elise Tillinghast of Thetford Center, Vermont, has been selected as our new executive director. She will begin her…

To catch those of you who didn’t read the first blog post in this series up, our 20-year-old log cabin is rotting and full of carpenter ants. Rather than fix it, we’re cutting our…

While trying to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant, Raiders of the Lost Ark hero and noted ophidiophobe Indiana Jones finds himself in a hibernaculum full of hundreds of writhing snakes. I…

I was sixteen years old in 1992, the year we started work on our log cabin. We built it out of red pine that had probably been planted in the 1940s. Dad felled the trees and my brother,…

Chances are that some of your friends and business associates have a boilerplate at the bottom of their email that says something to the effect of: “think twice before printing…

A few weeks back, I was visited by two city friends from Brooklyn. In the interest of cultural exchange, I figured I’d make venison steaks and fresh-caught wild trout for dinner –…