The Outside Story

Remnants of summer’s tall goldenrod don’t look like much in November, yet they harbor unseen lives. Globular swellings partway up the stems suggest a strange departure from the normal…

Garlic mustard is trouble. Unlike many other invasive plants, it doesn’t stop at the forest edge. It thrives in partial shade and so has no trouble growing in forest understories. It can…

In my youth, I was an avid fisherman who listened to heavy metal music. But today’s anglers catch heavy metal on a hook while singing the blues, because many of the fish commonly taken for…

Autumn is closing fast. We toss wood on the fire, button up the house, adjust to lengthening hours of darkness, and believe wild things are going about their own preparatory tasks. My lawns…

The beaver floated with its head sticking up out of the water and just stared at me. In the early twilight, the beaver’s constant presence was menacing. It clearly wanted the pool to itself…

You don’t have to peer too far into the pages of history to find accounts of severe flooding in Vermont and New Hampshire. The Great Flood of 1927 tops Vermont’s all-time list while the…

Imagine a day in late autumn. The landscape is painted in a palette of grays and browns. You’ve watched the geese fly south. You know that bears, bats, and woodchucks will soon hibernate.…

In much of New Hampshire and Vermont, our beloved maples are showing signs of distress. Sure, the reds and oranges for which our forests are famous are now popping out of autumn hillsides.…

A rainy day for a snail is equivalent to a beautiful day at the beach for us, which might just explain why our moisture-loving land snails were out and about in greater numbers this summer.…

Birds wheel through the air en masse, swooping and diving as a flock but never hitting one another. It’s not because they have magical powers, although that was one suggestion made in the…

How do we count the days? By bracketing them with night. We rise with the dawn and remain active into the evening, confident that when awakened by sunlight, the “next” day will be distinct…

In the twilight of an overcast mid-August dusk, members of the Hartland Nature Club in Hartland, Vermont, gathered by the side of a trim white farmhouse. At 7:28 pm, a small, dark animal…

Rory Moon can’t wait to climb through the culvert. His father, David Moon, says he can’t just yet. There are measurements to take first. “We have a serious outlet perch,…

Did you know there is a silk moth – one of the moths of the family Saturniidae – that belongs exclusively to Northern New England? Its natural range is entirely within Vermont, New…

Nearly a billion monarch butterflies from the eastern United States and Canada migrate to the mountains of Mexico each year, and this year’s migration is already underway. This has long been…

With autumn rapidly approaching, we in hilly New England are fortunate to witness spectacular displays of fall colors as the deciduous trees lose their leaves for the winter. This remarkable…

Some have teeth, some a sticky, entrapping liquid. Others have one-way tunnels leading to pools of digestive juices and are said to exude a paralyzing perfume. All of which are good reasons…

An oddity in the plant world is the roughly one percent of plant species that do not manufacture their own carbohydrates via photosynthesis. Instead, these plants are parasites, stealing…

To see a stream’s smallest inhabitants, lie on a flat rock and duck your head underwater. A mask and snorkel help. You’ll be assailed by the effervescence of rushing water, the sibilance…

Some of the best views in Vermont and New Hampshire are found at the top of fire towers. But with most of the states’ towers long since taken down, and with those few still remaining now…