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…

Vermont and Maine have each gone through a period of great concern over liquidation harvesting. Now it seems to be New Hampshire’s turn. Liquidation harvesting is a term given to the process by…

In July 2003, Maine’s Governor John Baldacci set a very ambitious goal for the owners of Maine’s forestland. By 2007, he wants to see 10 million acres of Maine forestland green-certified,…

Imagine this situation: one fine evening, a local forester knocks on your door and asks if you had been thinking of cutting your woodlot anytime soon. As this very possibility has been on your mind,…

Because of the way our nation was born and grew, we tend to think of land as an infinite resource. Most of us have ancestors who left an Old World where only the wealthy owned land. When they arrived…

The prices reported here are those that log buyers—mostly sawmills and wholesalers—are paying for logs. Because these are prices paid for delivered wood, landowners need to adjust the…