The Outside Story

The milkweed in our Vermont meadow droops, yellowing, as hordes of orange aphids huddle on the wilted undersides of its leaves, delicate stiletto mouth parts sucking plant juices as the blades…

Tacked to my office wall is a color-coded map, “World Biogeographical Provinces,” which describes the distributions of plant and animal communities. Unlike conventional maps with…

Just for a moment, imagine what the Northeast would look like if seas were to rise 4,000 feet higher than they are now. Northern New England would be reduced to a series of islands—an…

We have heard from our parents not to play with the shiny little balls spilled from broken thermometers. We have heard rumors of health problems related to dental fillings. And we commonly…

Right this minute, in the Connecticut River, is a very large, old eel. She has a snakelike body (yet she is a fish, with fins) and is a greenish-brownish color. She is slimy and will get even…

One summer night, in the light of a half moon, I saw a bullfrog trespass on another’s territory. The owner met the challenge full force. Eight times he inflated his lungs and guts, then…

Strange worlds lie secluded within everyday surroundings we know well, yet they often remain overlooked and unappreciated. Evergreen or deciduous, a tree can be wounded when wind tears off a…

I went walking in the woods in Sharon, Vermont, the other day, wearing shorts and sandals – which would have been pretty risky in Connecticut, where I grew up. Lacking protective,…

Hey – don’t mow that field just yet! As dairy farms continue yielding to house lots, more and more of us find ourselves in possession of old hayfields and pastures. Since these…

I became interested in bats on a warm June night when I was awakened by a fairly large one flying excitedly back and forth over my bed. Heart racing, I bounded out of the room, slammed the…

I am climbing through the brush with Alcott Smith, a veterinarian who spends more time in the woods than in the clinic, on a pilgrimage to one of the last extant rattlesnake ledges in Vermont.…

Sorry, Rocky. There is no such thing as a friendly moose. There are several reasons why a moose might appear to be friendly, or at least not afraid of people, says Kristine Bontaites, moose…

They say that, back before Europeans arrived in North America, the forest was so thick that a squirrel could have traveled from the Atlantic coast all the way to the Mississippi River without…

I often think back to the time when butternut trees were robust members of the tree community, before butternut canker swept across the tree’s range, infecting nearly every specimen.…

The spectacle of an osprey—a powerful raptor with a six-foot wingspan—plunging into the water from a height of a hundred feet and emerging with a fish in its talons might suggest…

Spring mornings and evenings at my family’s cabin in the woods of Waitsfield, Vermont, are charmed by the ghostly, flute-like song of the wood thrush. In recent years, however, wood thrush…

Winter’s back has finally broken. Painful memories of sub-zero temperatures are receding as red-winged blackbird and eastern phoebe songs announce the steady march of spring. Yet, far to our…

Vermont’s Interstate 91 is well traveled, but it’s a far cry from a busier superhighway close behind our house in St. Johnsbury. This major (but quieter) thoroughfare has two-way traffic…

A few years ago, I took my 6-year-old daughter Taylor on a snipe hunt. Not the kind of snipe hunt that most people are familiar with  a seemingly endless search for absolutely nothing…

Last week, on a dark, late-winter night, one of those all-too-familiar winter nights when the sky is clear and the temperature has fallen well below zero, I heard the call of a red fox –…