Yes, foraging can be risky. But most people approach wild foods with unnecessary caution. Foragers are often the subject of anxious looks even when nibbling wild plants that are no more dangerous or…

Ice storm. If you live in northern New England, those words can send a chill up your spine. They portend demolition derbies on the roads, power outages and the ominous cracking sound of limbs breaking…

In the spring of 1976, Bangor, Maine, was preparing for war. Douglas C-54 Skymasters, the same four-engine behemoths used during the Berlin Airlift, sat wing-tip to wingtip on the tarmac of the small…

Every animal must develop its own way of dealing with winter. Migrate, hibernate, or insulate; these are common strategies.  For a few small mammals, survival depends on the snow itself, and the…

On the seventh of December, men stood in the garage and said: “Yep, snow before Pearl Harbor Day; it’s gonna be a good winter.”  Then, armed with electrical cords, blow torches,…

Though they were spotted this fall at the Maine Tree Farm of the Year event at the Hidden Valley Nature Center, these forest pests seem appropriately festive for this time of year. Can you name them…

Why Do Evergreen Needles Look So Different From Deciduous Leaves? Ask anybody to draw a leaf and damn few would draw a pine, spruce, hemlock, or fir needle, and even fewer would draw the green scales…

Walking through a large chain store this past October – at least a week before Halloween – I stumbled upon a display of decorations. Not witches and pumpkins, but trees and bells.…

Tracking appeals to us because we enjoy sorting out nature’s subtle clues – clues that lead us to visualize and appreciate the behavior of different wildlife species. Simple tracks of…

Every year, I eagerly await the winter solstice, which this year falls on December 21. My anticipation is driven not from an affection for winter, but a hunger for sunlight. I want the ever-shrinking…

Why are there stripes on this forest floor following a light dusting of snow?

I went through a wicked dinosaur phase in my pre-teen years, and was convinced that if my future as an NFL quarterback didn’t materialize I’d make a lateral career move and become a…

One fall a young beaver, probably a two-year-old kicked out by its parents, built a small lodge in the old mill pond below our house. On cold January days when temperatures were below zero, I looked…

Maine's Native American basketmakers have brought a tradition back to life. For Jeremy Frey, of Maine’s Passamaquoddy Indian tribe, weaving ash baskets is a family tradition. He learned to…

Growing up, I never got along that well with school, but I always loved to read and especially loved to read hunting stories, which were their own genre back then. Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red…

I manage a lodge in the Groton forest on behalf of Vermont State Parks. One warm fall day, while standing outside the lodge, I noticed movement inside one of the window wells around the basement.…

Meghan Oliver found this on her dog after a walk in the woods in early November. What is it?

A maple leaf frozen in time (and ice) near the edge of a small pond in northern New Hampshire. “The blue seen in the shot is the reflection of a cloudless sky,” said Kaczmarek. “The…

Susan Morse has contributed to this magazine since its early years. One of her first articles appeared in our Winter 1997 issue. The topic was lynx. The opening paragraph mentioned her involvement in…

I had never thought of eastern hemlock as a forest giant until I visited the mountains of western North Carolina. In my northern New England experience, an old-growth hemlock was a good-sized tree,…