There you are, leaning against a big maple in your sugarbush, drill and tap at the ready, when you think, “Wait a minute…is this a red maple or a sugar maple?” While maples in…

My first reaction to the title of this book was to question how a distinguished scholar of conservation history could link “war” with an examination of forestry in America. Sam Hays began…

Anyone who’s keeps an almanac or “kitchen book” to record nature’s comings and goings in their backyard is following in the footsteps of Aldo Leopold. He said that those who…

As chronic wasting disease hovers at our doorstep, recent discoveries about how this disease spreads – and the parts of the deer it affects – should raise our collective alert level to…

The Winooski River runs in a generally northwesterly direction through northern Vermont, connecting, among other towns, Montpelier, the state capitol, with Burlington, the state’s largest city,…

The prices reported here are those that log buyers—mostly sawmills and wholesalers—are paying for logs. Because these are prices paid for delivered wood, landowners need to adjust the…

I’ve always been grateful that, in the great melding and merging of tongues that produced our beloved English language, we came out of it all with “tree” as the word we use for a…

My car is coated in long smears of salt. If I brush the car door, I’m left with a large, white, and somewhat tasty smudge on my clothes. While I’m always pleased to get home on winter…

In the spring of 1984, I spent many days in a study carrel on the seventh floor of Baker Library at Dartmouth College while writing Pond and Brook. One day, I walked past nearby Occom Pond and was…

If you take a close look at New Hampshire’s Mount Moosilauke, or the high peaks of the Franconia and Presidential Ranges, you can see gray bands of dead balsam fir trees within the green swath…

Nose-to-rock on the summit of Wheeler Mountain, just west of Lake Willoughby in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, I was attempting to unravel the microecology of granite ledges when I stumbled across…

And so do the spiders, the springtails, the beetles, and the wasps. If you’ve ever been out for a walk in the woods on a balmy day in late winter or early spring, you’ve probably strolled…

With trees stripped to their skeletons, winter is a good season for noticing the shapes that make hardwood silhouettes so distinctive. It’s a relief to put away the hand lens and twig guides and…

Before you start reading this, grab a nickel out of your piggy bank and hold it in the palm of your hand. Golden-crowned kinglets are the smallest birds to winter in the New England woods. They weigh…

How do animals cross the road safely when traffic speeds by at 80 miles per hour? Hopefully, they don’t have to. Officials from both Vermont and New Hampshire are working to make it easier for…

Anyone who grew up in a large family knows how much time is expended competing for food, space, and attention. Who is going to get the best seat at the movies, be served dinner first, or enjoy the…

Right around this time of year, when the mercury decamps to the far side of zero, the car won’t start, and the trip from woodshed to woodstove starts to feel Sisyphean, a little global warming…

Michael Walsh remembers seeing his first Carolina wren many years ago, a sighting that would not be so noteworthy if it happened today. It’s not that the plump, brown bird has become less…

In most of the animal kingdom, it’s the same story: egg meets sperm, embryo forms, and life emerges a set number of weeks afterwards. In humans, birth happens approximately 40 weeks after…

Wouldn’t it be great to doze off at work and still get something done? If you had a bird brain, you just might be able to pull it off. Studies have shown that birds regularly keep half of their…