In the photo, the mountain lion lies on its side on the shoulder of a Connecticut parkway. Tail lights shine in the distance. A Connecticut state trooper snapped the photo after a motorist had struck…

Last night, the floodlights were on at my favorite skating lake. Several children wearing plastic skates and shiny helmets were gliding on the ice, shepherded by young parents. A father pulled a…

I think I speak for all of us in expressing thanks for the natural order that’s been restored by January’s cold. Two weekends ago I was still afraid to walk on the lake ice around here. By…

Ken Kinder took this photo in late fall in northern Vermont. What was the purpose of the project?

Say you want to know how long a fallen tree takes to completely decompose. You could walk into the woods, cut a tree down, and return to check on it, say, once a month, for 10, 50, maybe even 100…

As scavengers, vultures rely on leftovers that hunters, both animal and human, leave behind. And when they feed on carcasses or gut-piles of animals that were killed with lead bullets, they’re…

Editor’s Note: This blog is by our friend Don Wharton; check out Don’s story on Adirondack hermits in our Winter 2015 issue. Six or seven years ago, a friend and I made a concerted effort…

Burdock (Arctium lappa) fits the anti-foraging stereotype: – big, bitter leaves, tough and weedy, with an ugly, gnarled root. “And you want to eat that?” people ask. “Really,…

Somehow trees put up with all manner of injury and assault during their lives. They have to: they are rooted in place and cannot move to avoid injury. Whether it’s ice- or wind-stripped branches…

I’m an enthusiastic, if laid-back, bird watcher. One of the things I love most about spring and summer is the effortlessness with which I encounter a wide variety of birds. Sitting in my…

On a warm, sunny day last spring, just a few weeks before the end of the school year, professional timber framer Makaio Maher stood in a small clearing in a stand of red pine trees in Newport,…

During a mild winter in northern New England, there are those of us who cheer our lower heating bills and those who scan the forecast, hoping for cold and snow. In a classic El Niño year like…

I help parent a teenage boy, who’s hard at work developing a portfolio of unassailable convictions. If my parents were to read this they’d smile and say: gosh, that all sounds awfully…

Your December photographs reflected the unseasonably warm weather, with foggy scenes and open water. An ash-throated flycatcher made a rare appearance in Connecticut, a mink fished a pond and...is…

Who hasn’t come back from a walk outdoors looking like this? But do you know the name of the plant these burrs came from?

People don’t generally associate Iceland with trees, much less forests. In fact, a casual visitor might dispute the notion that there are any trees or forests to speak of on this rocky island in…

Don Wharton’s piece on Adirondack mountain men got us wondering about the history of the foothold trap in America. So we looked into things and learned that while the fur trade was a huge part…

Even among the quirky cast of characters we know as birds, the crossbill is a bit of a freak. It’s hard to decide which is more bizarre: its bill or its breeding behavior. Front and center is…

“Caw! Caw!” Every spring we hear it. And my wife says, “that’s My Crow.” It’s apparently the bird’s name. She capitalizes it in her tone. I think she…

If you’re a hunter who’s ever ordered something from a sporting goods company, it’s probably safe to assume that you’ve been inundated with catalogues over the past four…