Have you ever air-dried a stack of pine boards and wondered why some bowed and some didn’t? Or noted that perfectly constructed joints swelled to a not-so-perfect fit in the summer? Or found…

Chainsaws are powerful tools, and you’ll work more quickly, safely, and efficiently if you own a good one. But with all the options out there, buying a chainsaw can be an overwhelming…

Those interested in observing the night sky are often frustrated by the glow of population centers and street lights that makes it difficult to see all but the brightest stars. But stargazers…

When we bought the old farm two decades ago, the Ghost Tree came with it. He was an old sugar maple with a knothole face, tears in the trunk and branch stubs. He looks like one of the Ents, the…

Acid rain has long been known to acidify the calcium-poor soils in parts of the Northeast, resulting in declines in sugar maple and other important tree species. New research by ecologists at the…

When it rains, the cupped leaf of the pitcher plant becomes so slick that ants, spiders, and other prey attracted to its sweet aroma slide into the plant, where they drown and are dissolved by plant…

It’s been five years since biologists found the first bats killed by white-nose syndrome in a cave near Albany, New York. It’s been four years since the first dead bats were found in…

Editor’s Note: On December 31, 2011, Cameron Cope passed away. Orange County, Vermont, lost a good logger, and former Vermont State Naturalist, Charles Johnson, lost a good friend. Here,…

I remember being a kid in the backseat of my mom’s giant blue station wagon, lost in observation as the world rolled by. Growing up on the fringe of the urban world of Hartford, Connecticut, I…

OK readers, for this week’s quiz, you need to identify all three species in this photo: the tree, the fungus, and yes, the dog.

I was sixteen years old in 1992, the year we started work on our log cabin. We built it out of red pine that had probably been planted in the 1940s. Dad felled the trees and my brother, Trevor, and I…

Ten years ago, my husband Marc and I sold our business in Chicago and acquired a woodlot in New Hampshire, thus fulfilling a lifelong dream of owning and conserving a large piece of land. The…

The northern cardinal, crimson and crested, is an avian icon, one of the most recognizable birds on the continent. But the rosebreasted grosbeak is also a cardinal. So is the scarlet tanager. Even…

Every morning, my pool is the scene of six-legged tragedies: chunky beetles puttering around on the surface, looking for a leaf-cum-life preserver; a few flies long since deceased. Once, the surface…

Jim Hedbor, of Grand Isle County, Vermont, has been collecting moths for decades, but he has a distinct memory of one special night of moth hunting. He was on Cold Hollow Mountain in northern…

This suspicious slitherer was photographed in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Do you know what kind of snake this is?

Chances are that some of your friends and business associates have a boilerplate at the bottom of their email that says something to the effect of: “think twice before printing this.” The…

Eastern hemlock is an important component of the forest. Hemlock stands provide nesting habitat for a slew of bird species, such as the blackburnian warbler, and brook trout congregate in stream…

I’ll always remember the time I ran into a wire fence at dusk. I was taking a shortcut through some woods, and the impact sent me tumbling. Even when I looked carefully, I could barely discern…

Cedric Pollet’s Bark: An Intimate Look at the World’s Trees ranks with the day in November 1972 when I walked into Chartres Cathedral and saw the magnificent stained-glass windows. Words…