The Outside Story

I remember being fascinated by the Dr. Seuss book Horton Hears a Who as a child. It made me wonder: could each of those specks of dust dancing in the light shafts from my bedroom window be its…

There is nothing like the fresh smell of a spring morning, unless, during the night, a skunk skulked about your neighborhood. The striped skunk is armed with just a teaspoon of odoriferous oil…

We don’t want to shock the tourists, but the spring woods do bring some color beyond green. While spring displays of herbaceous plants flowering on the forest floor are a treat, there is…

One of Vermont and New Hampshire’s least-known birds is the spruce grouse. This is partly because the birds live exclusively in the boreal forests of northeast Vermont and northern New…

Many residents of Vermont and New Hampshire are familiar with salamanders such as the eastern newt (and its terrestrial form, the red eft, which can often be found along hiking trails and…

Unlike the Ents in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, real trees can’t walk away from danger or fight their own battles. When climate becomes inhospitable, forests can only shift ranges…

The steady “drip, drip” of sap into buckets and the whirring of vacuum pumps pulling sap out of tubing mean that maple sugar season is underway once again across Vermont and New Hampshire.…

We’ve all seen them, picking their way thoughtfully across a cornfield or lurking quietly in an abandoned pasture. Wild turkeys seem to be everywhere now. In one field near my home in…

Five years ago, my wife, Sue, and I swallowed hard, signed a contract on the advice of our forester, and invited loggers onto our land. We’d never had logging done before, so we were…

There are few things on this pulsing planet that appear less alive, and more adverse to life, than snow. It falls from the sky in sharp-edged crystals. It blankets the earth in white, silent…

A few summers ago, I saw a red squirrel skittering along the top of a stonewall with something in its mouth. I snuck in closer and discovered the headless body of a chipmunk dangling from its…

Cold got you down? Ready to trade in your hat and scarf for something a little scantier? While you’re waiting for that to happen – and good luck! – consider a visitor to these…

We take for granted that trees drop their leaves in fall and open their buds in spring, with a glorious burst of flowers and leaves. Indeed, florists know that apple branches cut in March and…

We lost money on sheep this year at our farm. In the grand scheme of things, we’re in good company: farmers in New Hampshire and Vermont have been losing money on sheep for going on 180…

It was with uneasiness that I accepted the little African violet a friend gave me for my birthday a few years ago. I had never had any luck growing the cute little furry things. To my dismay,…

Five years ago, chronic wasting disease (CWD) was spreading across North America like wildfire. It leapt from its stronghold in the Rocky Mountain states across the Mississippi River to…

Insects have evolved a variety of different strategies for surviving the sub-zero temperatures of winter. Many spend the winter in a simple life stage – usually an egg – which is…

Each fall day he appears with a skinny face and leaves with ballooned cheeks. Over and over, he fills his cheeks and runs away to empty them. Our eastern chipmunk, it seems, is living in a…

Moose are arguably the most novel of all North American large mammals, if for no other reason than their strange appearance. Whereas deer and elk are handsome creatures, rams majestic, and…

On an August day 15 years ago, eight Minnesota junior high school students on a field trip caught 22 frogs in a farm pond. At least half of the frogs had some abnormality, mostly in their hind…