Have you ever been walking through the woods on a snowy afternoon and seen a bit of green poking up through the snow? Seeing the green fronds of a fern at this time of year may seem like an uncommon…

My father, who notices these things, once noticed that the newspapers seemed to be misprinting the times of sunrise and sunset in December. They said the sun wouldn’t start rising earlier until…

In mid-winter of 725 A.D., a 52-year-old cleric named Boniface chopped down the great Donar oak in the German territory of Hesse, thus depriving the Hessians of their traditional symbol of the Norse…

When it comes to nature, we tend to stuff things we don’t know into pigeonholes that are already defined by the familiar. If someone tells me their cat has left a “present” of a dead…

So you think you’re a Sagittarius, right? Or an Aquarius? Well, think again. According to the horoscopes, I’m supposed to be a Virgo. Yet there’s absolutely no doubt that I’m a…

The winter coats are out, as are the hats, scarves, and mittens. We humans are hoping for lots of sunny days this winter to help keep our spirits lifted through the darkest days of the calendar. All…

While Romania is clearly not a part of the territory we normally cover, we believe that the writer’s observations in this article are relevant to the ongoing debate about the role that large…

Any tree is better off without having holes drilled into its stem. Depending on their size and placement, stem holes can cause all kinds of problems for trees, from interrupting the flow of water,…

Of all the land conservation projects in the Northern Forest over the past two decades, the most hopeful might be the Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership, which was concluded this past summer on…

Private forests, especially in the eastern U.S., are being converted to non-forest uses at an unprecedented rate, according to a new U.S. Forest Service report. The report, Forests on the Edge:…

Spreading salt to make treacherous ice magically disappear from road surfaces must have seemed brilliant in the early days of its use. Naturally occurring, abundant, and cheap, road salt allows us to…

Here’s something you already knew: home heating oil and propane prices are up roughly 50 percent from a year ago across the Northeast. More old news: same with firewood. But what your local news…

Water is a remarkable substance. Like air, it is necessary for the existence of virtually all life forms. It is present – although in differing amounts – throughout the world. It moves…

My wife recently came across a very interesting family document, an official inventory of the estate of her great-great-grandfather, Robert McCrillis, who died in 1884 in Topsham, Vermont. Written in…

Recently I spent the afternoon in the woods with a long-time friend of mine, Charlie Moreno. Charlie and I graduated from forestry school a year apart and have since maintained our connection in…

Just as a door needs hinges to allow it to function properly, a good hinge is needed to safely bring a tree to the ground. In tree felling, the hinge is the uncut wood left between the notch, known as…

When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. -Robert Frost, "Birches" Thanks to Robert Frost, when you see…

I opened the lever action and showed my grandson Aidan, age 8, that my deer rifle wasn’t loaded. As his mother and grandmother watched us, I asked Aidan if he wanted to hold the rifle. He looked…

Hikers in the Adirondack Mountains of New York and the Green Mountains of Vermont often share a common reward when they emerge from the wooded lower slopes to the open summits: a marvelous view of the…

It’s easy to speak of the elegance and charm of butterflies and moths: their gift of flight, their role as pollinators, their place in poetry, their gossamer beauty. But save some respect for…