The Outside Story

As I stroll through the cemetery near my home on a snowy day, splashes of golden orange, bright as daylilies in July, pop from the gray stones. These patches are elegant sunburst lichens,…

Wilson Bentley (1865-1931) lived his entire life in Jericho, Vermont, where he developed a passion for snowflakes at an early age. He started by collecting snowflakes and trying to create…

Every year my husband and I cut a Christmas tree on family land. We look for a young balsam fir growing in the power line right-of-way or in a forest clearing. Fir is our favorite type of…

Come winter, after the bears have retreated to their cold weather dens, many backyard bird enthusiasts hang feeders to attract – and nourish – avian visitors. Birds need more than…

“Shhh,” I tell my 5-year-old son, “there are animals sleeping, right under our feet.” He presses his ear against the frozen ground, hoping to hear the slow, sleepy…

What do the following items have in common: the Declaration of Independence, Da Vinci’s notebooks, Bach’s musical scores, Rembrandt’s drawings, Shakespeare’s plays, and…

As we stroll down a forest trail, we pass trees of all types and sizes, with red and orange and brown leaves strewn below, a riot of ferns fading to yellow, and intermittent moss-covered…

Years ago, I visited two Vermont caves in winter to help biologists count hibernating bats. After descending through a hole into the first cave, I immediately noticed that it was much warmer…

My German mother was a highly superstitious soul, especially when it came to the natural world. Case in point, one day a “fairy ring” of mushrooms appeared in our yard. My mother…

Fall’s cooling temperatures signal many changes. Among the least visible, but most incredible, is the migration of the American eel. Somewhere right now, at the bottom of a lake, pond,…

One morning in early autumn, I was running errands in downtown Keene, New Hampshire, when I was stopped in my tracks by a flash of yellow. Crouching down, I found a gorgeous, palm-sized bird,…

“I’ve got something for you,” my husband calls from the front door. He’s found an oddly beautiful beetle in the autumn woods. It’s around three quarters of an…

The deep purple caught my eye, an unexpected color amid the autumn-hued palette of gold, red, and orange. I stooped to look more closely, thinking perhaps someone had dropped some manmade…

In September, as summer yields to fall, most of the colorful birds that breed in our region during spring and summer head south for warmer locales. The departure of ruby-throated hummingbirds,…

I have often been stopped in my tracks by the sight of a white-tailed doe standing in the lush summer grass. Depending on the sun’s slant, the animal’s coat is a rich shade of…

The grackle appeared early last spring, the day before I put the feeder away (so as not to tempt the bears who would soon be awakening from their winter dens). In the dim light of a cloudy…

I put the small brown ant I had mounted (but never identified) under a microscope and peered down at it. Two huge, headlight-like eyes stared back at me. That couldn’t be right; ants…

Hikers climbing the Northeast’s highest peaks will traverse several different vegetative zones along the way. On the summits, they’ll likely encounter plants so hardy that many…

The opossums that show up on my students’ trail cameras at Saint Michael’s College sometimes look out of place, with their naked tails and frostbitten ears that seem so poorly…

I was sitting poolside with my children one summer day when another parent hustled her son out of the water because of a swimming cockroach. The “cockroach” turned out to be a…