On September 1, Steve Long will be leaving Northern Woodlands for a fellowship at Harvard Forest. Long founded the magazine with Virginia Barlow, and served as editor and executive director from 1994…

If you’re a fan of a good, old-fashioned New England winter, with snow piling up under the eaves, you’ll be pleased to know that we’re going to have a La Niña this year. If you…

The New England cottontail rabbit once hopped through much of New England, thriving in the old fields, shrubby thickets, and young forests that defined our region. But the landscape has changed…

Kyle Jones took this close-up shot of a tree's root wad with a small hole at its center. What do you suppose made this hole?

As the mobs of cars around wildlife check-in stations suggest, moose season is underway in Vermont and New Hampshire. Maine’s between seasons at the moment, but hunting will resume in late…

I was eating breakfast when I noticed a black duck quietly feeding on our small pond. It would occasionally “tip-up” — head underwater, tail skyward — in typical puddle duck…

The Connecticut River – the boundary between Vermont and New Hampshire – is often referred to as a great river, a distinction based on its diverse four state watershed and its key role in…

Soon after the ice storm in January 1998, I passed through an apple orchard on my way uphill to an ice-shattered woodlot. The birches surrounding the orchard were bent into, the maples were a terrible…

Penny Harris of Cambridge, Vermont took this photo of a pine branch near her home. What’s protruding from the branches?

Henry David Thoreau admired a hand-made axe handle in a journal entry made more than 150 years ago: “Those made by hand are considered stronger than those which are turned (on a machine),…

Last weekend, my four-year-old niece asked me why leaves turn red. Dang it; why couldn’t she have asked me an easier one? Like, why do leaves turn green? Or even yellow? Nobody knows precisely…

The tree in question is conical, its cones dangling from skyward-curving branches, scaly bark covering its tapered trunk. Short, four-sided needles radiate spirally from each twig – unlike…

There has been much publicity in the last few years about the alarming losses of honeybees. In 2007, an estimated 30 percent of hives were lost nationwide, largely through a mysterious affliction…

I can still remember my first chew of spruce gum. Like so many other children from Maine, my dad gave me that first amber nugget. I was five, and we were skiing in back of our house in Stillwater. You…

Hi there. I’m Meghan Oliver, the new assistant editor at Northern Woodlands. I couldn’t be happier to be here, assisting in the daily behind-the-scenes action it takes to produce this…

Bennington County forester Chris Stone took this picture on Friday, September 16. Well?

Grab a handful of soil. Go ahead, step outside and scoop up a small amount in your hand. It’s hard to imagine all that’s going on in there. You’re holding trillions of creatures,…

We gathered these seeds from members of the maple family. Clockwise from top, what species are they?

There were times, during Tropical Storm Irene, when the rivers in Vermont and New Hampshire seemed to be made out of something other than water. Whatever it was was viscous and liquid, sure, but that…

I was in the woods recently with a mycologist and he mentioned that whenever he is out with people looking for mushrooms, the only question anyone ever asks is “Is it edible?” One time a…