Knots and Bolts

The marsh-marigold (Caltha palustris) (also known as cowslip and kingcup) is not a marigold at all; it is a member of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae) that grows in shaded marshes,…

Dive-bombed by deer flies and jabbed by blackberry thorns, I was in a rush to cut down the beech trees that were blocking the growth of some young white pines, a preferred species for my…

Say you want to know how long a fallen tree takes to completely decompose. You could walk into the woods, cut a tree down, and return to check on it, say, once a month, for 10, 50, maybe even…

As scavengers, vultures rely on leftovers that hunters, both animal and human, leave behind. And when they feed on carcasses or gut-piles of animals that were killed with lead bullets,…

Burdock (Arctium lappa) fits the anti-foraging stereotype: – big, bitter leaves, tough and weedy, with an ugly, gnarled root. “And you want to eat that?” people ask.…

People don’t generally associate Iceland with trees, much less forests. In fact, a casual visitor might dispute the notion that there are any trees or forests to speak of on this rocky…

Don Wharton’s piece on Adirondack mountain men got us wondering about the history of the foothold trap in America. So we looked into things and learned that while the fur trade was a…

We’ve owned our forest in Starksboro, Vermont, since 2005, and have added to it over the years by purchasing adjacent properties; the entire parcel now totals 290 contiguous acres. We…

You and I have two opaque eyelids, one above the eye and one beneath. When we blink, they meet in the middle. Some birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, and mammals have three eyelids – two…

Great Mountain Forest (GMF) occupies slightly more than 6,000 acres at the southern end of the Berkshires, in northwest Connecticut. The forest was under private conservation and management…

It is not an exaggeration to call the cattail (Typha spp.) the supermarket of the marsh. Food can be procured from cattails during any season – even the dead of winter – and nearly…

I’m not the type to crave foods, wild or otherwise, but on the hottest days of summer when the cicadas are whirring, I do get a serious hankering for sumac-ade. No wild drink is easier…

Tracy Moskovitz and Bambi Jones just can’t seem to stop buying land. It started innocently enough in 1978, “when Bambi went down to the Post Office and talked to the clerk and she…

While observing the antics of a litter of red fox kits, I witnessed an encounter between the kits’ mother and a very large raccoon. The vixen started barking incessantly when she saw the…

I’m out hunting an unlikely target: mosquitoes. At each stop along the road, I pull on a bug net and gaiters, wrestle a cylindrical vacuum and battery pack onto my shoulder, and head to…

The view from atop the great Mayan pyramids of Tikal, in Guatemala’s Petén region, reveals something that is increasingly difficult to find in the tropics these days: unbroken…

It was early, even for the birds, when photographer Bill Byrne and I arrived at Jim Conkey’s sawmill in New Salem, Massachusetts. C & M Rough Cut is nestled in the woods just a…

There’s no mistaking the stinging nettle. Sure, its paired, heart-shaped, coarsely-toothed leaves are easy to spot. But it’s the painful burning sensation one gets from even a…

According to the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, last winter was among the top five coldest on record in Ithaca, New York, when you consider the number of days the…

Yes, foraging can be risky. But most people approach wild foods with unnecessary caution. Foragers are often the subject of anxious looks even when nibbling wild plants that are no more…