With the sun finally warming the land, the buds have awakened are doing their things again. Filled with promise, they burst forth, tender leaf tips lengthening and flowers unfolding. In my mind, few…

While experienced foragers can make gourmet meals out of any number of wild plants – from cattail roots to stinging nettle leaves – most amateurs focus on three plants: morel mushrooms,…

Chances are good you have malaria in your yard. It’s found throughout New England, but you won’t come down with it. This is avian malaria, and, unfortunately for birds, it is as common as…

Blake Thomsen, a licensed land surveyor from Chelsea, Vermont, contacted the magazine with a request that we run a small blurb explaining to landowners why they might see a surveyor wandering around…

Pollen is to trees what sperm is to animals. It carries the tree’s male genes; it is the male fertilizing unit of woody plant reproduction. Typically, pollen appears in spring as a powdery cloud…

A woodland cemetery in southern Vermont. Grave in foreground, circa 1833 reads: See travelers as you pass by/As you are now so once was I/As I am now you soon must be/ Prepare to die and follow me. As…

It is a magical time we anticipate for months.  The sap begins to flow in bare trees.  Even in cold, with snow covering the ground, the redwings and robins and grackles return within a day…

It was Sunday morning, last Sunday morning, and dawn was just breaking in fishing camp. First there were birds singing in complete darkness: prophets? Cheerleaders? Either way the birds seemed to be…

Legend tells us that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey as our national bird. Too bad it’s not. The bald eagle is thought to possess attributes admired by our American culture —…

I started hiking in the late 1940s and early 1950s when owning a customized pair of leather boots made by

If James MacGillivray, creator of the Paul Bunyan tales, were to collaborate on a book with Stephen King and the Brothers Grimm, the result might be something like this collection of stories by Jerry…

Plants in the wax-myrtle family – notably bayberry and sweet gale – are known for their fragrance. But sweetfern may be the most aromatic of all. On hot, sunny days, the scent is…

Shall we go to the beach today?  If you can’t afford Bermuda or sunny Florida, perhaps we can visit some former beaches closer to home. Put on your boots, and leave the flip-flops because…

Maple Sunday—March 29—was the last day of our maple sugaring season. The sap’s still running but the sugar content has dropped to the point where the remaining firewood in the…

On December 11 and 12, 2008, a major ice storm coated trees in New England and upstate New York with layers of limb-snapping ice. While official tree damage estimates have yet to be released, it is…

On the back of maple syrup cans, and in public relations pamphlets designed to explain to consumers why maple syrup is so expensive, the ratio of 40 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup is often used…

Most of the time, a male ruby-crowned kinglet is a fraud with feathers. When he appears, neither ruby nor kingly, you may wonder how he got his name. Pale green and gray, small and fleeting, he is…

Beechwood fires are bright and clear If the logs are kept a year. Chestnut’s only good, they say, If for long ’tis laid away. Wood as fuel has been so important for so long that it’s…

For many, the greatest joy of spring is the return of migratory birds and the chance to observe – from a polite distance, of course – their busy rituals of courtship, nesting, and tending…

I must admit to harboring serious skepticism when I saw this book from the Forest History Society. How could anyone summarize the history of American attitudes and public policies toward the…