“Lime, lime, and nothing more makes fathers rich and sons poor.” This adage hearkens back to times when soil fertility was poorly understood; farmers who worked acidic soils discerned that…

Anyone who has spent time hiking or walking in the woods has probably come across a trail that has been deeply eroded to the point of becoming a streambed full of large, unstable rocks. It’s an…

This is the caterpillar summer of our discontent. They seem to be everywhere, eating the leaves off ornamental apple and cherry trees, defoliating black cherry trees in fencelines, and even munching…

There is a crop that most of us spend many hours on in the summer. We don’t eat it, sell it, or put it in vases, but most of us couldn’t image living without it. It is grass! Somewhere…

Crows are a lot like us. Not only do they like to live in the same places we do but also they live as we do. “There is probably no organism on Earth that has a more similar social system to…

Do ancient fish swim through your dreams? I cupped a frog in my hand and looked closely at a colorless little fleck in the middle of its head between two protruding eyes – the brow spot. This…

Anyone who has ever mismanaged a pile of firewood has probably seen spalted wood: wood in a relatively early stage of decomposition that is irregularly bleached and vividly marked with thin, dark…

Despite the late spring this year, the wine-colored spikes of peony flowers have now pushed their way back into the aboveground world. These spikes will soon be covered with swelling green knobs of…

In February 2000, noted climber and writer Guy Waterman ascended to the summit of Mount Lafayette to freeze to death, deliberately. Laura Waterman’s new book, Losing the Garden, places the stark…

Hunting the Whole Way Home is a memoir of a lifetime of upland bird hunting. It’s also a paean to embattled wild places in northern New England (author Sydney Lea lives in the Connecticut River…

“Looking at and seeing the natural world is a skill that takes years to acquire,” Ted Williams writes in his new book, Wild Moments; and that skill is one he has developed to a high level.…

Sometime in June, just after its bright, light green leaves have fully expanded, mountain maple’s delicate, yellow-green flowers begin to bloom. The very un-maple-like, tiny flowers are on long,…

If you want to get a trout fisherman’s attention, whisper the words “hex hatch.” When Hexagenia limbata hatches in early summer, the event draws swarms of fishermen to the ponds that…

Sometimes by midsummer you can identify stands of paper birch from far away: they are the tan patches on otherwise green hillsides. Identifying the cause of the discoloration is more difficult –…

Humans have a long time to choose if, when, and how many times to reproduce. But many animals have short lives and must spend most of their time surviving and ensuring the perpetuation of their genes.…

You might have a hard time finding wild ginseng in the future woods, thanks to one of our most abundant herbivores: the white-tailed deer. Though deer populations are temporarily low in some areas,…

Greg Saulnier is paid to be picky. At 44, the Rumney, New Hampshire, native has been looking at logs for 15 years, first as a logger and for the last eight years as a log buyer for Columbia Forest…

In the world of high-end veneer logs, there’s a lot of money to be made – and a lot of things to watch out for. High-end veneer logs are an almost mythological subject. These are the logs…

The young people board the van in the middle of a loud, congested neighborhood. As they ride, they watch the scenery gradually change from factories and apartment buildings to fields and forests. They…

You can invest in them. The simplest investment would be time. There are many young hardwood stands dense with saplings the size of your finger or fist that need nothing more than time to develop…