The Outside Story

“Look!” I exclaimed, bending to examine a pair of half-inch-tall, bright orange, club-shaped mushrooms. Kneeling in the leaf litter, with my 2-year-old son watching in puzzlement,…

On an October day years ago, my husband and I were canoeing on a pond in the Green Mountain National Forest. We heard crashing in the bushes along the shoreline just before a magnificent bull…

In May of this year, when a cottonwood measuring nearly 3 ½ feet in diameter and more than 100 feet tall fell across a trail in the Saint Michael’s College Natural Area, I saw the…

As autumn begins and insect populations dwindle, many waterfowl species rely increasingly on seeds as a food source. Common buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), with its spherical bouquets…

I recently found myself sitting in the crawl space of my house holding a bioluminescent mushroom. I’d been on a quest to find one of these light-producing mushrooms and, on my birthday,…

In northern New England, acorns ripen in late summer and normally drop from oak trees from September through October. They may fall earlier, however, for a host of reasons, from eager…

On a recent hike up Eagle Mountain in Milton, Vermont, we climbed to a ledge overlooking Lake Champlain. Turkey vultures soared overhead, tilting back and forth on the breeze. A sheer cliff…

Until 65 million years ago, huge reptiles dominated our planet – and every summer I think they might be making a comeback. The sight of a snapping turtle hauling herself onto a sunny log…

A caterpillar eats and eats, becomes a chrysalis, and after a period of metamorphosis emerges as a beautiful butterfly! Except, sometimes…it doesn’t quite work that way.…

It’s evening, and you’re in the forest. You close your eyes and inhale the sharp, sweet, turpentine scent of pine. The air is still, yet the branches overhead seem to nod at your…

The doodlebug waits. It is patient. It is silent. And it is hidden under a fine layer of dry, loose, sandy soil at the bottom of a small conical pit. Soon, a wandering ant will slip down the…

For most of the year, it’s hard to find a pond without at least a few mallards swimming around. These ducks, with their green-headed drakes and streaky brown hens, are among the most…

At first, I suspected it was the deer that had almost completely defoliated the northern spicebush sapling I had planted just weeks earlier. Only days prior, it had been brimming with new…

Named for their polka-dot-like markings, spotted turtles have declined throughout most of their range, which stretches from Maine south along the Atlantic coastal plain to northern Florida,…

Spittlebugs are the color of a new spring leaf, their bodies both tiny and so fat that you hardly notice their six miniature legs underneath. This plumpness makes them an appetizing snack for…

When I worked on a college campus, a northern mockingbird often accompanied me on the walk between my car and my office. This slender gray bird darted from the hedges, flashing white wing…

When our lilacs bloom in late May, pale yellow butterflies with black stripes arrive to feed on their nectar. These are tiger swallowtails. These exquisite butterflies have a broad black band…

In the shallow margins of many lakes and ponds in June and July, you may spot male sunfish guarding their nests. The sunfishes (family Centrarchidae) comprise many well-known species –…

If you take a walk through a thick, broadleaf forest on a cool summer morning, you might recognize the cascading, metallic song of a thrush called a veery. It is an ethereal sound that echoes…

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, / And here on earth come emulating flies, / That though they never equal stars in size, / (And they were never really stars at heart) / Achieve at…