For Laurence and Brenda Taylor, the logging business is truly a family affair. Their company, L.E. Taylor & Sons, based in Porter, Maine, employs twelve family members from three generations, all…

In urban and suburban areas, Christmas tree disposal has come a long way since the bad old days when trees were just compacted with the rest of the household trash and landfilled. Today, progressive…

Back in the late 1990s I had a friend who had a dog who hated Teletubbies – those large, fuzzy creatures that were part of a once-popular kid’s television show. Now, how could a dog hate a…

Rachel Putnam came across this strange sight while on a chilly walk in Orford, New Hampshire. She was able to identify this substance in a balsam tree, can you?

Winter’s chill takes many forms in this month’s photo gallery. It appears in ice thorns on a blackberry cane, in the pillowed contours of a snowy stream, and on a mountain ridge encrusted…

There’s a lot of talk in the forest industry these days about “mechanized logging.” Some lament the passing of an era – the loss of the sounds of a revving chainsaw, a wedge…

Landowners seeking to make money selling carbon credits while also continuing to sell timber have a new forestry technique to consider. A University of Vermont forest ecologist has developed a method…

Near the house where I lived during my Colorado years, there was a trail that wove through a sprawling grove of perfect quaking aspen trees. In spring, the soft green of emerging leaves was one of the…

“Do not be afraid to go out on a limb…that’s where the fruit is.” Anonymous Here I am, going out on a very long limb, freely admitting that despite living among trees, earning…

If you’ve ever seen chevrons on the bark of an American beech, you know you’re looking at a tree that’s been hugged by a black bear. And you’ve likely been impressed with the…

This isn’t a trail blaze. What is the circular white spot (and the other smaller white spots) on the bark of this sugar maple tree?

I was raised Catholic and followed the protocol closely up through Confirmation and into my teenage years before I lapsed. My current relationship with the Church is like the one you might have with…

When I was about age 10, Mrs. Garvey assigned an essay to read on opossums. Never mind that we lived 3,000 miles from the nearest actual opossum; I was 10 and one did not question the logic of the…

So here’s my movie concept: during a laboratory accident, a scientist exchanges his DNA with a fly. Over the next few weeks, our hero slowly shrinks in size and transforms into an insect with…

In these days of governmental gridlock, it is difficult to imagine government agencies cooperating to do anything that is even slightly complicated. But it hasn’t always been that way. From 1971…

River otters are the most aquatic members of the weasel family. They can swim up to six or seven miles per hour on the surface of the water as well as underneath it, and can remain submerged for up to…

Gaultheria procumbens goes by many common names – checkerberry, teaberry, and boxberry. But it is most often called American wintergreen. Even those unfamiliar with the plant will recognize its…

I still remember my childhood excitement when my grandfather explained to me what those holes were in the deep snow. “Snow roosts,” he explained, and they’re made when a ruffed…

This image was taken last December from the summit of Mt. Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak. “The summit had been covered in clouds all morning while I was hiking up.” says…

Castle Freeman wrote here recently [“Easy Wood,” Autumn 2017] about his prolonged tussle with a major limb that had separated from an old butternut tree in his backyard...a job that proved…