The Outside Story

Ebola, SARS, avian flu. All of these are horrifying diseases. They have all attracted quite a bit of media attention lately. And, luckily, they seem to be diseases that are more of a concern…

Yesterday a warm mid-March sun shone upon a few inches of fresh snow. By nightfall, it was cold again and starry clear – perfect for bobcat courtship. Evidence of last night’s…

Several years ago, I attended a talk by a Seattle man who described how civic leaders, after much consideration, had adopted the Pacific salmon as the key indicator of quality of life in their…

“Good weather for ducks.” How often have you heard a drizzly spring day described this way? But how about if the weather is 15 degrees Fahrenheit, with a stiff wind and light snow? Could…

Ten years ago, I led a field trip to Silver Lake State Park in Barnard, Vermont. A few parents and a gaggle of children – bedecked in flippers and waterwings – lugged our gear to…

I was drinking around four gallons per year before I realized I had a problem. I should have kicked the habit right then, but instead I started making my own and was soon up to six gallons per…

Last year, the headlines read, “Ivory-billed Woodpecker Found in Arkansas.” Scientists smiled and birders cheered. The largest woodpecker in North America, thought to be extinct for over…

During late summer and early autumn, raccoons in Vermont and New Hampshire witness something of a miracle: food falls from the sky. This is not their traditional fare of plants and…

If you find yourself gazing out the window in winter wishing the hustle and bustle of yardwork could be spread more evenly across the year, don’t despair. There is something you can do right…

After the leaves of sumac have fallen, the large, inverted cones of tiny red fruits that poke up from the tops of their wide crowns give the trees a top-heavy look – a look that is even…

This has certainly been a normal winter so far here in Vermont and New Hampshire – normal in that there’s no such thing as normal. Temperatures have been above average, and snow depth…

Birders who have been keeping a tally of their feeder visitors over the past half-century may have noticed an unusual trend: some species that once strictly summered here, including tufted…

“Ice happens,” says Rod Wentworth, a fisheries scientist with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. For the animals that live in our area’s streams, the big question is where that…

Have you ever been walking through the woods on a snowy afternoon and seen a bit of green poking up through the snow? Seeing the green fronds of a fern at this time of year may seem like an…

My father, who notices these things, once noticed that the newspapers seemed to be misprinting the times of sunrise and sunset in December. They said the sun wouldn’t start rising earlier…

In mid-winter of 725 A.D., a 52-year-old cleric named Boniface chopped down the great Donar oak in the German territory of Hesse, thus depriving the Hessians of their traditional symbol of the…

When it comes to nature, we tend to stuff things we don’t know into pigeonholes that are already defined by the familiar. If someone tells me their cat has left a “present”…

So you think you’re a Sagittarius, right? Or an Aquarius? Well, think again. According to the horoscopes, I’m supposed to be a Virgo. Yet there’s absolutely no doubt that I’m a Leo.…

The winter coats are out, as are the hats, scarves, and mittens. We humans are hoping for lots of sunny days this winter to help keep our spirits lifted through the darkest days of the…

Here’s a question for the season: where does all that mulch go? Farmers and gardeners across Vermont and New Hampshire have laid down thick carpets of mulch – leaves, hay, straw,…