For many of us, winter in the Northeast means cold temperatures and piles of snow, drifting through forests and across fields. It’s hard to imagine that winter here could be different, but the…

The first time I saw the fox last February, I did a double take. It was late morning when I glanced out the window on my way from one task to the next. The unexpected flash of red made me stop and…

Sheila Bourque remembers well exactly when it all started. It was about five years ago. She had climbed Hacker’s Hill in the Maine town of Casco and arrived at the top to find a celebration in…

This tree has a disease. What’s your diagnosis?

“We know that getting hit is part of the sport.” -Boxer Frank Buglioni Thirty-two degrees is a magic number in sugaring because without it sap doesn’t flow. A freeze at night and…

Your February photos revealed a deer escaping a coyote by water, a skidder escaping water by logs, and a glimpse of an intriguing new winter pastime: forest goat sledding.  Check out the lynx…

In an earlier era, before children, my husband and I would sometimes host workshops on our woodlot. One group in particular enjoyed using our property because, they enthused, we had such a diverse…

An injured barred owl sat in the back seat of a four-door sedan, staring balefully out the window at its rescuer. “I saw him on the side of the road, just sitting there, trying to fly,”…

Without making a partisan political statement, I think it’s fair to say that in a lot of ways America is greater than it’s ever been. Consider cooking. Thanks to the proliferation of…

In 1979, Laura and Guy Waterman came out with the acclaimed Backwoods Ethics, a book that advocated low-impact hiking, camping, and alpine management. This is a rerelease of that book with a new…

My wife and I spent a summer 25 years ago living with a crow. A veterinarian acquaintance had been given a fledgling that had fallen out of a nest, and through a series of handoffs the bird came to…

Driving to town on a winter day, I occasionally see flocks of white birds where the wind sweeps across fields, blowing snow across the road and exposing the grass. Rising and falling, the birds look…

What is spilling out of this log? (Thanks to Bonnie Pease for the photo.)

I just finished a fabulous book by David Brooks called The Road to Character, in which he explores our transition from a culture that valued humility and trusted institutions to an individualistic…

An old wagon road begins in our apple orchard, drops down into the woods, and parallels our field. Like many old roads, it’s bordered by stonewalls and old sugar maples, and it’s a common…

Before Al Jordan was the preeminent bird carver in the Northeast; before his carvings were worth thousands of dollars and he’d won top prizes at the most prestigious wildlife art exhibits, there…

The alarm went off at 1 a.m. I got up, dressed, and sleepily attempted to eat some breakfast. My stomach protested, as this was not a normal time to be eating. Hitting the road, I noticed there were…

Community Forests by Joe Rankin; The Resilient Bobcat by John A. Litvaitis; The Nona Belle: Building a Dory With Local Wood by Charles W. Johnson; Watched Over by Great Horned Owls by Brendan Galvin;…

An email chirped in my inbox; “Check out the cute face on this insect we found.” I opened the attachment (yes, from a reliable source). My colleague Professor Peter Hope had taken a…

A few autumns ago, one of the frequent visitors to our gone-wild apple orchard was a lopsided, one-point buck. We often see does and young, antlerless deer in the field, and by the end of each fall…