Knots and Bolts

Well-managed forestland provides a host of benefits to society, from flood mitigation to wildlife habitat to carbon sequestration, and there’s long been talk about finding ways to…

For many, fond memories of college might include football games, Homecoming, and perhaps a keg party or three. For the alumni of The Ranger School, nostalgic reveries conjure images of hard…

All too often, discussions about culverts center around two different objectives. There’s the practical side: designing and sizing a structure that will protect roads. And then…

Some might call it a plantation, and some a tree farm, but my family refers to it simply as “the farm.” To the outside observer, our marginal patch of land may appear…

At the Mohonk Mountain Preserve in New York’s Shawangunk Mountains, naturalists have been collecting data on weather, spring migrants, plant life, and seasonal milestones for almost 90…

In his New York Times best-seller A Walk in the Woods, author Bill Bryson mourns the loss of the “massively graceful” American chestnut: “There has never been any tree like…

It’s been five years since biologists found the first bats killed by white-nose syndrome in a cave near Albany, New York. It’s been four years since the first dead bats were found…

Editor’s Note: On December 31, 2011, Cameron Cope passed away. Orange County, Vermont, lost a good logger, and former Vermont State Naturalist, Charles Johnson, lost a good friend.…

Ten years ago, my husband Marc and I sold our business in Chicago and acquired a woodlot in New Hampshire, thus fulfilling a lifelong dream of owning and conserving a large piece of land. The…

The late summer air is cool and heavy as I reach the trailhead. To hike through a forest at night is to move through a world dominated no longer by sight but by sound and smell. Nearing a…

So your tech-savvy child or spouse got you an iPad for Christmas and assured you that this device would change your life. “Thanks,” you said in a drawn-out way, smiling with your…

When hunter Matt Harwood from Shaftsbury, Vermont showed us a drum he’d made from a deer hide, we were struck by the practicality of the endeavor. In talking with him about it, though, it…

Henry David Thoreau admired a hand-made axe handle in a journal entry made more than 150 years ago: “Those made by hand are considered stronger than those which are turned (on a machine),…

The tree in question is conical, its cones dangling from skyward-curving branches, scaly bark covering its tapered trunk. Short, four-sided needles radiate spirally from each twig –…

I can still remember my first chew of spruce gum. Like so many other children from Maine, my dad gave me that first amber nugget. I was five, and we were skiing in back of our house in…

Spring’s grace and beauty will soon be everywhere – cue the Stravinsky. Courting songbirds will rule the air, wetlands will resonate with love-mad croaking, and on the forest floor,…

Thirty years ago, I discovered the carcass of a handsome buck draped awkwardly over sharp-edged rocks. It was May and the grip of winter had loosened. Bright new leaves framed the buck’s…

The article on growing mushrooms on hardwood logs in the Spring 2009 edition of Northern Woodlands intrigued me. My 16-acre woodlot in North Wolcott, Vermont, had been cut-over hard in the…

University of New Hampshire (UNH) professor Barry Rock has a piece of advice for anyone studying the forest: enlist a middle-schooler. Rock directs Forest Watch, a program housed at UNH’s…

In last winter’s issue, we highlighted a 400- year-old hemlock tree that was only 20 inches in diameter; in a recent web feature, we went the other way and marveled at a 70-year-old red…