Jewelry artist Lucy Golden became immersed in the outdoors at a young age. She and her two sisters spent their childhood roaming the woods and fields of Pennsylvania, where her father was a…

Meghan McCarthy McPhaul is a lifelong woods wanderer. She began her writing career as a newspaper journalist, then worked as a freelance writer for more than a decade, writing for a number of regional…

Late one January afternoon, my husband and I stood on the shore of a frozen pond below the summit of Camel’s Hump, admiring the view. Suddenly we heard familiar calls, and a flock of robins flew…

“Last February, in late afternoon, a bobcat found the suet feeder in my backyard," explains photographer Elinor Osborn,  who resides in Craftsbury Common, Vermont. "It dined on suet for…

In the last issue we looked at a few handy devices for smallscale, low-impact logging, including the skidding cone. One alternative to the commercially available skidding cone is a homemade skidding…

Poplar (also called aspen) buds are an important winter food source for many species of wildlife, but particularly for the ruffed grouse. During the course of a year, a ruffed grouse may feed from as…

If you spend time foraging, you can’t help but be aware of how abundant – and yet, how ephemeral – food can be on the landscape. This is true any time of year, but especially when…

A very large egg? Or a very small boy? This mystery orb was photographed in a southern woods, but it's also often found in the Northeast. What is it?

This whiplash weather we’ve been experiencing has made for some treacherous walking conditions up in our woods. A recent snow and thaw cycle produced layers of ice and powder – soft enough…

Your December photos (with a few last November ones snuck in) showed birds enduring the cold, people working in the woods, and intriguing ice formations. A bluebird peered through the falling snow, a…

Snow day! The announcement draws squeals of joy from students throughout the school district and groans from parents who must scramble to provide care for their kids and face a treacherous commute.…

Though it’s often called “fisher cat” or “black cat,” the fisher (Pekanis pennanti) rarely fishes and is not a cat. The fisher’s only likeness to the domestic cat…

This map represents typical winter destinations of nine species that nest on Karl and Kathy Ross’s 126-acre woodlot in Wallingford, Vermont. The Ross property includes a mix of northern hardwood…

Two chipmunks vie for seeds on our front lawn. One lives directly underneath the bird feeder. Another hails from the far side of the house, address unknown. The chipmunks appear identical to me: same…

“Logging and fishing are still a big deal in Grand Lake Stream and we protect it as much as we can.” With these words, Kenny Sprague introduces this story of an unlikely coalition that has…

Jennifer Blake-Mahmud often thinks of plants and trees as being somewhat like Lego building blocks. Sometimes what they become looks nothing like the picture on the box. For instance, they might…

Ever since last fall, I’ve been working on a tree. Chainsawing it up. Splitting it. Stacking loads of firewood. It’s a monster tree, about three-and-a-half feet across at the stump. An old…

I’ve always found slender, sharp, yellow-ochre beech leaves alluring, and it’s endearing how they cling onto saplings late into the fall. However, Fagus grandifolia, the American beech,…

A couple of decades ago, I spent several winters living in Crested Butte, Colorado, where I learned to peer into the cottonwood trees between Route 135 and the East River on the rare occasion when I…

Pam Ames has been an educator for more than 30 years, the last 13 of them at Killingly Intermediate School in northeastern Connecticut, where she teaches seventh grade science. She brings to her work…