I like to think of Sarah Knock as a topographer. She records the surface features of water as light purls across it, showing us with amazing verisimilitude the fusion of light and liquid. Knock…

When Rita and I left the fleshpots of Boston and Cambridge and moved to Temple nearly forty years ago (forty years!), we made that move with the blessing of our friend Molly Gregory. Molly lived in a…

Sharpening an ax is not difficult, but it does require a basic understanding of how the business end of an ax works. An ax is almost never used to cut perpendicularly through wood fibers; instead, the…

In forestry circles, monocultures don’t get high marks. Most planted forests have just one kind of tree, and because of this they are often looked down upon as biological Levittowns: boring…

If this story were a movie, it might best begin with a flashback. After the opening credits, perhaps backed by an ominous soundtrack, we’d be transported back two years, to a happier time before…

When visitors arrived at Ed Lanigan’s 309-acre tree farm in Alton, New Hampshire, he waved them over to a row of sugar maples he had tapped a couple of weeks earlier. The March breeze had a…

Every community has its hubs: those people who tie disparate strands of the network together, who collect and distribute information. For the forest products industry in northern New England, one of…

For six wintry months, trees have appeared as woodblock reliefs or iron sculptures, their bare limbs framed against a cold horizon. But as spring unfolds, stark branches morph into soft beauty.…

For those of you struggling to learn bird identification, here’s an innovative system to help you name any species you encounter. That’s right. No more pesky field guides. Your avian…

When an insect develops on a single host, and kills the host in the process, it is called a parasitoid. Parasites, on the other hand, tend to nibble on their hosts without killing them. And predators…

Stewardship Stories - Readers Share Their Ideas and Projects In the fall of 2007, with support from the U.S.D.A.’s Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project (WHIP), we installed seven vernal pools of…

Once upon a time, forest stand structure meant age structure. Areas of forests containing similar-aged trees were called even-aged stands, and areas with trees of multiple ages were considered…

Let’s go back to the good old days. Let’s go back to the days when all was well, when life was pure, when music filled the air. Chances are good that every one of us is drawn to an image…

As communities in the Northeast look for green fuels to replace coal and oil, they are exploring options in woody biomass, including plantings of shrub willow. Our forests will certainly play a key…

They’ve been compared to oversize antlers, bones, or fantastic teeth. If you’ve ever seen the remains of a stump fence, you probably have your own description. The stump fence is an…

The onset of spring brings many changes to our part of the world. The longer days and higher temperatures entice plants to emerge and trees to bud. On our lakes, the ice begins to melt. We anticipate…

Who knew? David Allan Sibley’s natural history interests do not end with birds. Nearly a decade after the appearance of the landmark Sibley Guide to Birds, we now have a bookend volume - same…

For some time now, the board and staff of the Center for Northern Woodlands Education have been working on a plan to increase our organization’s capacity so that we can reach many more people…

Two wildlife biologists in Rhode Island studying how forest-dwelling game birds make use of their habitat found that the birds unexpectedly exhibited what one described as “the bar scene…

Red maple trees are becoming increasingly dominant in forests throughout the eastern United States, and that worries Kim Steiner. A professor of forest biology at Penn State University, Steiner said…