Vermont's deer rifle season opens Saturday, which means our editor was distracted all week at work before finally disappearing Thursday night. Why the early start? This essay from 2009 attempts to…

This time of year, squirrels and chipmunks are rushing to fill their winter larders with seeds and nuts, often loudly squabbling with each other. It’s harvest time in the woods, and not just for…

In Alaska and the more open terrain of northwestern alpine meadows and muskeg habitats, a rutting bull will flash and flag his massive antlers like “social semaphores,” as described by…

There’s something in us that can’t help but be impressed by an old tree. Perhaps we’re simply in awe of something that has outlived generations of humans and will outlive us. We…

The lab (okay, garage) here at Northern Woodlands was the scene last week of some high-tech testing. Using the latest in scientific hardware – a small glass vial purchased on Amazon for $12.54…

Tracker Lynn Levine sent along this neat shot. She knows what made the tracks, do you?

Approximately 8,000 years ago, a period of global warming called the Hypsithermal Interval stimulated timber rattlesnakes to move north from the vicinity of Long Island. They followed river corridors…

When you find a bird feather in the woods and stoop to pick it up, does your mom’s voice echo in your brain? Can you hear her say, birds have lice, don’t pick that up? Mom was mostly…

At first, Beverly Kaiser and her husband Phillip were pleased when a father-and-son logging team stopped by their house in Washington, Vermont, in late August 2008. Ken Bacon Sr. and Jr. of Barton,…

Autumn is coming to a close. The brilliant fall foliage is past peak, if not already layered in the compost bin. The last geese are honking their way toward winter homes. Predictions are proffered…

This small black patch was seen on the forest floor in early October in southern Vermont. What is it, and what helped cause it?

As I write this I’m listening to a tractor trailer back up to the office; it’s here to deliver the first shipment of our new seasonal nature calendars. I have a sample on my desk, and at…

Friends sometimes express surprise when I tell them that I’m a Quaker logger, and that I find logging to be deeply spiritual work. How, they ask, can it possibly be spiritual when you’re…

Forest fragmentation is the breaking of large, contiguous, forested areas into smaller pieces of forest; typically these pieces are separated by roads, agriculture, utility corridors, subdivisions, or…

I have friends who live in the North Woods. Moose graze on their lawn. Loons call from the pond. And the gray jays line up on the deck railing for breakfast. They swoop in when they hear the…

Most of us have been trained to picture a cord of wood as a neatly stacked pile measuring 4x4x8 feet. But how much of that 128-cubic-foot rectangle is wood and how much is air? Searching on the…

As I make the drive from my suburban home to my country property – a 75-acre woodlot in the northern part of Allegany County, New York – I reflect on that piece of land with great pride.…

Watch old footage of a lumberjack using a crosscut saw (colloquially called a misery whip) – or better yet, pick one up at a farm auction and try it out yourself – and you’ll come to…

At the New Hampshire University Organic Dairy Research Farm in Lee, even the heat for the wash water is organic and locally-sourced. The heat comes from the farm’s composting facility, a…

What the heck happened to make this tree “turn” out this way? (Thanks to Rick Russack in New Hampshire for the photo.)