If you’re into nature, you may also be into skulls. And if you’re into skulls, you’ve probably struggled with skull processing. To do it right you need a terrarium and some dermestid…

Meghan Oliver spotted this wild scene on a tree in Vermont. Do you know what these striped creatures are?

Nearly 40 years ago, I discovered some curious bear feeding sign on a mid-elevation ridgeline in northern Vermont. A pole-sized bigtooth aspen had been peeled to its roots like a banana. Strips of…

Toddlers aren’t the only ones fond of mud puddles. Butterflies and moths often gather at puddles in large groups. I witnessed about thirty tiger swallowtail butterflies around a puddle on a…

Donnie Hardwick Jr. is a spitting image of his father. In the picture hanging in the lobby of the family business, Donnie Sr. sports a scraggly beard, wide-rimmed glasses, and a blue crocheted hat…

The ice storm of 1998 provided a lesson on the resilience of the northern forest. The precipitation started falling on January 5th, and for four days the gargantuan ice storm of 1998 pounded northern…

The bank in front of our house is a dense tangle of arching canes and thorns as large as cat claws. I wriggle further in, lips pressed against the pain of scratches and fingers straining for that…

These wood chip piles were observed near each other on a walk in the woods early last winter. Each pile was found at the base of a tree. What made each chip pile?

If you find the sight of blissful ignorance in the face of near-death entertaining – and I think in this case most of you will – check out this video of a hapless (though kind of loveable)…

The fluttering flash of black and iridescent green was startling, and it took me a moment to figure out what I was seeing. In the blink of an eye, the movement stopped and the insect seemed to…

One of our favorite recent pieces was Tony Donovan’s photo essay on Amos Congdon, which ran in the Spring 2013 issue. Amos was a woodsman from Lyme, Connecticut, who ran a sawmill in the 1970s.…

If you have a wood pile, you may have come across a shed snake skin ― a translucent, onion skin-like wrapper imprinted with the snake’s scale pattern. Or perhaps you’ve seen one…

Here’s a tip: Found earlier this summer in Vermont.

One of the hazards of working at Northern Woodlands is that people are constantly asking you tricky nature questions. There I’ll be, happily moseying along a trail and someone will spring a rare…

A living jewel hangs suspended beneath the microscope. An emerald sheen shifts with its every pulsing breath over iridescent silver, gold, and bronze swirls. Aquamarine legs hang poised, deftly…

No one could fault you for running away, screaming in terror, if you saw a large, flying, cigar-shaped insect armed with a “stinger” bigger than a sewing needle. Thankfully, the female…

When the calendar says it’s the first day of spring, no one is fooled in the North Country. Those first, yellowish daffodil leaves at the edge of a melting snow bank? Best to ignore them. The…

In assaying wooded land, foresters observe, measure, describe, and map the forest, delineating it into smaller areas – or management units – known as stands. In this way, a forest is seen…

The silhouette of a moose is noticeably different from that of its deer cousins. Its bulky, hunched body sits on tall, improbably proportioned legs. And then there’s that nose. It’s long…

In the 1980s, in the midst of the last spruce budworm outbreak, the pulp and paper industry in Maine and eastern Canada faced an unprecedented softwood shortfall. The insect was killing millions of…