Trout season opened recently in most of the Northeast, and in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d share a fishing story in this week’s blog that I wrote in 2006. Good luck to all you…

Northern Woodlands’ columnist Bryan Pfeiffer pulled this branch out of the water for a closer look. What are those whitish bumps? (Photo by Bryan Pfeiffer.)

Not long ago, as the ice went out on my local brook, I came across some fresh beaver cuttings and a scent-mound in an area that showed sign of having been dammed before. Did the fresh sign indicate…

A distant motor thud-thud-thuds as if trying to start, then dies away. The noise repeats, and again dies off. I’ve been fooled by this sound, wondering who could be trying to start a 2-cylinder…

Like house designers everywhere, James “B’fer” Roth starts with the building site. Though unlike most, it’s not the soil or topography that he studies first. He looks for the…

Last fall, I went to a nearby wetland with a pair of clippers and cut twigs from one willow shrub after another. It wasn’t hard to tell the willows from the non-willows because willows are the…

We found this odd-looking plant growing on a moss-covered boulder in a Vermont sugarbush. What is it?

This year, when Moderator Ann Wilson raps her gavel, calling the Craftsbury Town Meeting to order in the new Craftsbury Academy Gymnasium, she’ll be standing on a forest of local trees hewn…

The eastern white pine is the tallest tree in this part of North America, with the biggest specimens getting up near 200 feet. They can live for 250 years or more. A truly big one is jaw-droppingly…

Editor’s note: Last winter, the Vermont Woodlands Association partnered with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation and Northern Woodlands to sponsor an essay contest for…

When David Weiss obtains a canister of old movie film, he gives it the sniff test. “I pry off the lid, sniff it, and if it doesn’t knock me over with the smell of vinegar, it’s…

Postal workers have postal routes; milk truck drivers have milk routes. But a maple route? Last spring, The Wild Center, a nonprofit environmental education organization and natural history museum in…

Although the word is related to scarring – something you’d think we’d want to avoid – soil scarification [pronounced scare-ification] is a legitimate silvicultural technique…

Editor’s Note: As those of you who have followed this sugaring season journal over the past two seasons are well aware, it’s hard for me to keep things in real time. During big runs…

Our sugarhouse is within walking distance of an elementary school, so we’ve given tapping demonstrations to hundreds of school kids over the years. At the part where someone drills a hole in…

This tree is bedecked with some ugly flowers – and in winter no less. What’s going on here?

Rumors have been swirling in sugarmaking circles about government registration of sugarhouses in all the states where maple syrup is produced. We asked Matthew Gordon, the new executive director of…

One could be forgiven for thinking the U.S. maple industry is in decline, considering the poor sugaring season in 2012 and fears about climate change, but the reality on the ground is that business…

While on a late-spring hike, photographer Frank Kaczmarek came across a bald-faced hornet nest that had dislodged from a tree. He took out his camera and captured these new adults emerging from their…

My friend Ed’s a barrel-chested logger who lives in southern Vermont. He’s a tough hombre, as is anyone who makes their living cutting trees. I’ve seen him bull his skidder up…