Recently, I mused to a colleague that I wished we had tables sized for our new meeting room. We’re starting to implement an ambitious three-year plan to extend the educational reach of this…

If you were fortunate enough to grow up with freedom to roam outdoors, there are likely certain places that stick with you. For me, one of these places is a thicket of old mountain laurels that my…

Blood Sisters by Jennifer Wise; Seeing the Climate Through the Trees by Joe Rankin; Grazing in the Woods: Bringing Silvopastures to the Northeast by Hallie Metzger; Grave Diggers of the…

A native fungal pathogen that was once considered relatively harmless has become increasingly damaging to eastern white pines since the late 1990s, and stressed, weakened trees appear to be the most…

Most microorganisms that digest and recycle woody material do so by producing enzymes that accelerate chemical reactions to break down molecular compounds in the wood. Brown-rot fungi, the most common…

In 2017, spring peepers appeared in my neighborhood wetlands, on April 16, with trademark enthusiasm, broadcasting sexual exuberance across our narrow, wooded valley … a full-throated,…

The same thought came up frequently as I read Mark Mikolas’s A Beginner’s Guide to Recognizing Trees of the Northeast: I wish I had had this book when I was first learning to identify…

Jim Fuller, a former park ranger at Vermont’s Grand Isle State Park, described this interaction with a tourist from New Jersey, when he confiscated their out-of-state firewood. Ranger Jim: "We…

This spring-flowering plant is fairly common in the Northeast, though it may not be recognizable yet. What plant is it? (The common name for the species is acceptable.)

We’re a generally rooted species – at least our contingent; the ones for whom place might be analogized to a limb that the body would not function properly without. It’s easy to…

Your April photos showed the forest in transition, from a snowshoe hare shedding its white coat to red maple buds opening in the sun. Fox kits played and an eastern comma butterfly emerged from its…

On the western side of Vermont, the Otter Creek wanders leisurely through hayfields before easing into Lake Champlain. Wildlife abounds, with shore-nesting bald eagles and ospreys, mud-scrambling…

The canoe scraped noisily onto the gravel bar on the point of one of the great bends in the northern Connecticut River. I’ve stopped to see a remnant of the floodplain forest that once covered…

Janet Hayward Burnham, of Bethel,  Vermont, was driving to the bank one day when she saw a tree on the side of the road that looked like it was covered in decorative webbing, “cans and…

Growing up, I spent many summer afternoons along the banks of a local canal snatching painted turtles as they basked on fallen logs. For many of us, turtles are the gateway animals that start a…

The big white birds paddling gracefully across a Massachusetts pond last November surprised me. I’d grown up in the town I was visiting and had never seen swans there, although my friend assured…

We’ll be publishing our next Reader’s Photo Gallery on May 11, and what a pleasure it has been after a long winter to see your images of spring wildlife, from bear cubs to migratory…

One last (hopefully) snow scene. A reader happened upon this stirred up patch of bloody snow last weekend on a backcountry ski high in the Green Mountains. What do you suppose caused this commotion?…

I spent every afternoon with my infant daughter last May – it was both an act of love and a reflection of the childcare juggling act that parents do these days. She wasn’t a great napper,…

Imagine taking a walk through a part of New England you’ve never seen—how it was 190 million years ago. This New England is hot, and the infrequently replenished lakes are surrounded by…