The Outside Story

In recent years, the crepuscular wailing of coyotes has become as much a part of autumn in Vermont and New Hampshire as falling leaves and wood smoke. But coyote voices are not music to…

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has recently been discovered in the Northeast for the first time. CWD is a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (brain disease) that is similar to mad…

If autumn had a sound track, one of its main themes would be the honking of Canada geese as they slice the gray sky in their ever-shifting V-shaped formations. But if the call of the Canada…

Our local forests are generally susceptible to fire each year during two very short, dry periods. The first is when mud season has ended and the flush of green understory plants has yet to…

Our organic vegetable farm sits deep in the Connecticut River valley, a few hundred feet above the river and more than a thousand feet below the top of the valley’s walls. On autumn…

The shape that tree leaves take is mostly an adaptation to shade and sun; leaves are tailored to optimize the production of food and oxygen under conditions that range from parched desert to…

We’ve all fallen for it at some point, those of us who spend time in the woods: the way it looks now is the way it always has looked. And the way it always will look. And why not? When…

Who loves a ladybug? Until recently, everyone did. These tiny beetles gobble aphids and other soft-bodied insects that plague crops and ornamental plants. It is said that their name refers to…

Forest scientists who study global warming in the northeast say that a warmer climate could lead to later and lackluster leaf peeping. Three different things could cause this to happen, acting…

Go out in your yard some evening this fall, cock your head towards the sky, and listen. Thrushes, warblers, sparrows, and blackbirds will be swiftly moving across the night sky toward their…

“If you want to be recalled for something that you do, you will be well advised to do it under an Elm – a great Elm, for such a tree outlives the generations of men; the burning issues…

It’s a magnificent bird – one of the largest woodpeckers in North America. Its plumage is striking, with stripes of black and white feathers and a bright red crest. It can be shy.…

We humans have a knack for believing that everything was better, more vivid, more extreme, or at least more memorable when we were younger. The snow was deeper. The foliage was more beautiful.…

Take a look at any Connecticut River tributary in August, and you’ll be hard-pressed to remember back to April when melting snow and spring rains filled it to its banks. At Spring…

I’ll admit it: I was one of those kids who hid behind the couch when the tornado lashed the Kansas prairie in the early scenes of The Wizard of Oz. My parents could only coax me back out…

Avid summer readers are immersed in thrillers, pot-boilers, and fantasies whose plots swirl around sleuthing and solving mysterious codes. But look beyond the printed page, and you will…

Some people call any wet, mucky place a bog, or maybe a swamp. They hardly ever think to call it a fen. It may well be a fen, of course, unless it’s a marsh. Or possibly a seep. How to sort…

“Lime, lime, and nothing more makes fathers rich and sons poor.” This adage hearkens back to times when soil fertility was poorly understood; farmers who worked acidic soils discerned that…

Anyone who has spent time hiking or walking in the woods has probably come across a trail that has been deeply eroded to the point of becoming a streambed full of large, unstable rocks. It’s…

This is the caterpillar summer of our discontent. They seem to be everywhere, eating the leaves off ornamental apple and cherry trees, defoliating black cherry trees in fencelines, and even…