I’ve long been an admirer of Cathie Pelletier’s Mattagash novels. In The Funeral Makers, Once Upon a Time on the Banks, and The Weight of Winter, she creates a fictional territory as rich…

I first read Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac in 1971; every year since, I’ve scanned it, quoted from it, lost it, bought it again, moved it, traveled with it, given it as presents, worn…

Unlike the Ents in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, real trees can’t walk away from danger or fight their own battles. When climate becomes inhospitable, forests can only shift ranges over…

The steady “drip, drip” of sap into buckets and the whirring of vacuum pumps pulling sap out of tubing mean that maple sugar season is underway once again across Vermont and New Hampshire.…

This long rusty mark was found on a black cherry near our office in Corinth, Vermont. What caused it?

We’ve all seen them, picking their way thoughtfully across a cornfield or lurking quietly in an abandoned pasture. Wild turkeys seem to be everywhere now. In one field near my home in central…

Five years ago, my wife, Sue, and I swallowed hard, signed a contract on the advice of our forester, and invited loggers onto our land. We’d never had logging done before, so we were nervous.…

Chances are you remember where you were when you saw your first bobcat. Maybe the moment seemed haunted, the cat little more than a ghostly flash of cinnamon and yellow in a spruce thicket, there then…

In her 1905 book, Our Native Trees and How to Identify Them: A Popular Study of Their Habits and Their Peculiarities, Harriet Keeler extols the unexpected qualities of the inner bark of slippery elm:…

It’s not unusual for landowners in this part of the world to find themselves on one side of a wet area with a need to get to the other side. This can be a vexing problem. Boggy areas often…

The black-capped chickadee may be the perfect songbird. It is vocal and approachable, inquisitive and dependable. Even the casual birdwatcher finds in the chickadee a neighbor, a friend, an…

Melissa Fierke’s journey to becoming assistant professor of forest entomology at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, began when the former loan officer…

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there and I am prepared to expect wonders. —Henry David…

Silk-spinning spiders have been around for roughly 400 million years, and they’ve made good use of their time. Today, they occupy just about every habitable region of the Earth. Scientists have…

“There is but one tree in the pasture,and [the cows] are all collected and now reposing in its shade… It shows the importance of leaving trees for shade in the pastures as well as for…

In southern Appalachia, they still call brook trout the “hemlock trout” because they’re mainly found in the cold water and deep shade of the hemlock forest. These spectacularly…

Sugarmakers begin drilling holes and hammering spouts into their maple trees at their own discretion, and each has particular schedules and reasons for tapping when they do. Still, the traditional…

Photographer Frank Kaczmarek photographed this female lo moth in North Woodstock, New Hampshire. These giant silkworm moths never feed in their adult form, which lasts 3 to 6 days on average. Their…

Judged by the contents of its clutter, my desk is not a particularly happy place. You can picture my computer monitor gasping for air amidst a pile of papers that amount to a sea of bad news. Rummage…

Northern Woodlands received many generous contributions in 2010, but one in particular stands out. One of the members of our board of advisors (who wishes to remain anonymous) provided a challenge…