“What a horrifyingly garish sight,” I said to my friend as we surveyed my Christmas tree last year. We had just finished decorating it and my eyes were sending messages to my brain, like,…

Walking through our old Christmas tree plantation, the fragrance of balsam fir evokes memories of dragging freshly cut trees to the baler, riding on the top of a wagon full of trees, and sharing a…

Animals display a dazzling variety of colors, particularly in the tropics. But even here in northern New England where wildlife diversity is comparatively limited, we enjoy a rich palette of colors…

What is this rusty piece of machinery lying (standing?) in the woods? Photo by Richard Cofrancesco.

We marked around 80,000 feet of marginal- to low-grade white pine in our woods recently, and the first jag – about half – has been cut and shipped north to Canada. The truckers were…

Of the billions of trees in the Northeast, I’ve known maybe 50 well, maybe 10 with a draw-from-memory intimacy. The apple trees I prune each year in the yard, for instance, or the sugar maple…

A few years back, we had some family friends over for a cookout. One of them looked up at the long, straight rows of Christmas trees growing on our hillside in the distance. “It looks just like…

It seems each autumn, I start noticing sunsets more. They are so pink, so orange, so bright. I’ve always chalked up my autumnal sunset attention to my mood shifting with the changing season;…

I heard about Joe Wheelwright before I knew him – that’s the natural order of things in a small town. “There’s this guy out in East Corinth who turns trees into men.”…

Cree Tradition & Transition in Northern Canada Christmas on the Tree Farm The Man Who Freed a Giant Beech Party on Your Woodlot A Harlequin (Duck) Romance, an essay by Vermont Poet Laureate…

Those of us who live in the Northeast are familiar with the vicissitudes of winter. We know firsthand that not every day sparkles with rime ice or delivers fluffy drifts of sun-dappled snow. We know…

Photographer Roger Irwin took this photo of his friend Phil Stearns on a small beaver pond in Groveton, New Hampshire, on a brittle, early-winter day.

Let’s begin with the original lower tree, which appears to be one of several similar-looking dwarf cultivars of white spruce. These are very common in the nursery trade, prized for their slow…

Approximately eight years ago, my dogs, husband, and I held a meeting. By unanimous showing of hands and paws, we agreed it was time to end our pattern of bouncing around cities and find somewhere…

Bryan Nash Gill, Leader, 2011 30.5" x 21.5", relief print on Okawara paper We often come to understand things by isolating them. We pluck something from its environment, look at it under the…

This fibrous little thing has the same exfoliating capabilities of your favorite loofah hanging in your shower. But what exactly is it, and where the heck did it come from?

Even if you’re not a deer hunter, chances are you’ve heard of “the rut” – slang for the white-tailed deer’s mating season. This event is going on right now, as is…

Hi all - So things are good up in the North Woods. We hung two bucks the first weekend, courtesy of my brothers, Trevor and Brendan. The weather has been less than perfect for hunting, so we are…

Environmentally conscious Americans have been partaking, for some time now, in long, spirited, and often muddied discussions about energy. Whether it’s wind, hydro, wood, nuclear, natural gas,…

One thing that still amazes me about living and working in Maine is the amount of ecological diversity one can find in a fairly small area. The other day, I came across a black spruce stand in the…