For those of you who aren’t following the battle to ban bear baiting in Maine, here’s a quick recap: Animal rights groups are pushing a ballot measure that will ask voters this November to…

Well, it took some practice, but I’ve finally learned to pronounce “anthocyanin.” This is the pigment that manifests as deep, glossy red in staghorn sumac – one of the earliest…

Ever since the deserved success of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, readers have faced an avalanche of titles seeking to show how a seemingly banal commodity…

If you can remember when backpacking meant hiking with an external aluminum frame pack, when hi-tech fabric meant those navy, long-sleeved polypro funk sponges with the little white horizontal stripes…

Maple sugarmaking, as an endeavor, has not suffered from a lack of literary coverage. If you make syrup, chances are you already own Helen and Scott Nearing’s The Maple Sugar Book, which is a…

When I was a girl, my grandmother gave me a guide to the wild animals of the Rocky Mountains. It was a small book, bound in green cloth, with a page or two for each animal. The drawings – one of…

Sea-run fish are often overlooked in modern life, as fewer and fewer people touch or even see the many species that once clogged Atlantic seaboard rivers. While the general modern disconnect from all…

The northward creep of red oaks is no secret. On late autumn days, their enduring crimson seems to drive with us up I-91. We could point to climate change, or perhaps thank forgetful blue jays. But…

My visit to Thom Egan’s Hardwick, Vermont, studio this early spring came at the end of a very long, gray winter. It felt like my rods and cones – the retina’s receptors for light and…

Imagine you're an insect cruising through the air. Suddenly, you realize you're heading straight for a spider web. You're doomed. But wait – you can still escape by slipping through…

What is happening with this (now dead) caterpillar that Karla Salathe photographed in South Sutton, New Hampshire? Bonus question, what type of leaf is it on?

As I crested the hill, I raised my head and hit the brakes. Standing in the road just 40 feet in front of me was a female moose. In a car, this sort of experience is terrifying. But I was on a bike,…

Photo Essay: The Brook Trout, Theology of a Quaker Logger, Big Trees of New Hampshire, Adirondack Canoe Classic, Timber Theft, Autumn’s Mast, Timber Rattlesnakes, and much more

In the last installment of Tricks of the Trade, we examined the venerable peavey, and offered several modifications to make an already invaluable tool even handier. Now it’s time to head to the…

Perhaps you’ve caught a glimpse in your headlights of a mouse with a very long tail, leaping across the road at night. Or maybe your cat has deposited a specimen on your doorstep. This is the…

The materials that birds use to build their nests vary widely between species, from twigs and grasses to mud and even their own saliva. Hawks typically use coarse, dry branches and twigs as primary…

In northern states, where deep snowpack causes deer to spend much of the winter under the dense canopy of evergreen stands, the animals’ nitrogen-rich waste may be making the soil less favorable…

Northern Woodlands co-founder and former editor Steve Long found this design in the heartwood of a maple tree he was bucking for firewood. People in Orange County, Vermont, are justly proud of their…

Satellites are commonly used to monitor large-scale environmental changes, and airplanes are often used to get a clearer picture of the overall health of particular forests. Now, a plant pathologist…

I don’t often shake down my cat for a dead mouse, but I did think it was fair, considering that he is always shaking me down for his cat food.  I wasn’t going to eat his mouse. …