I have always admired nature’s mutineers: animals and plants that thwart the recognized system and do their own thing. As a child I was the sole member of my own duck-billed platypus club,…

Bonnie Honaberger found this mystery bundle attached to a winter branch. What is it?

Geoff Dennis lives in Little Compton, Rhode Island, where he makes a living as a commercial fisherman. He’s also an avid photographer and birder, two hobbies that converged in 1995, when he…

In your January photos, birds dined on frozen fruit, a fisher inspected a yard, and a ten-point buck celebrated the end of hunting season. A boy tried out new snowshoes given by his grandfather,…

With pantlegs stuffed into our boots to ward off ticks, my wife Kathryn and I trudged after Si Balch, our licensed forester, straight into a spruce thicket next to our house. The going was tough. Much…

“I spent a lot of time earlier in my life being very politically active, testifying, being on boards of non-profits, and ultimately being frustrated and feeling ineffective. I realized that my…

Whenever I spy a pileated woodpecker traversing the sky, I pause to watch its weird undulating flight. The jerky rise-and-drop movement of this large woodpecker is endearingly gawky – like a…

Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is gaining new appreciation across North America. A glimpse of a possible future – as seen through panels of spruce and fir. Here in the Northern Forest, we have…

Take a volcanic hotspot at a crossroads of ocean currents, isolate it 600 miles from the nearest landmass, and place it under the equatorial sun. Wait a few million years, allowing seeds and animals…

As we leaned over the Colchester Bog boardwalk, a student asked, “What’s that black stuff on the water?” I suggested gently poking it with a twig. This elicited the expected…

Following the journey that forest products take to - and through - ND Paper's mill in Rumford, Maine. I’ve always been fascinated by pulp and paper mills. There is something mysterious and…

The Water Works wasn’t the only job Charlie was able to obtain. He got the timber contract to cut on Betsey Pratt’s property around Mad River Glen Ski Area. I only met Betsey once. She was…

We recently published an Outside Story describing four evergreen ferns that brave northeastern winters. Here are photos of two of these species, covered up to the tops of their fronds in the snow…

Jewelry artist Lucy Golden became immersed in the outdoors at a young age. She and her two sisters spent their childhood roaming the woods and fields of Pennsylvania, where her father was a…

Meghan McCarthy McPhaul is a lifelong woods wanderer. She began her writing career as a newspaper journalist, then worked as a freelance writer for more than a decade, writing for a number of regional…

Late one January afternoon, my husband and I stood on the shore of a frozen pond below the summit of Camel’s Hump, admiring the view. Suddenly we heard familiar calls, and a flock of robins flew…

“Last February, in late afternoon, a bobcat found the suet feeder in my backyard," explains photographer Elinor Osborn,  who resides in Craftsbury Common, Vermont. "It dined on suet for…

In the last issue we looked at a few handy devices for smallscale, low-impact logging, including the skidding cone. One alternative to the commercially available skidding cone is a homemade skidding…

Poplar (also called aspen) buds are an important winter food source for many species of wildlife, but particularly for the ruffed grouse. During the course of a year, a ruffed grouse may feed from as…

If you spend time foraging, you can’t help but be aware of how abundant – and yet, how ephemeral – food can be on the landscape. This is true any time of year, but especially when…