Thankfully, most northern trees aren’t dead in winter. They’re dormant – very much alive but relatively inactive. They still burn energy maintaining life, but little goes on in the…

A white pine weevil close up or, even better, seen through a hand lens, is so silly looking it will make you laugh. This plump, quarter-inch-long beetle (Pissodes strobi) has a tapering head that…

When April temperatures reach 45 degrees Fahrenheit and a long rain extends into the evening, spotted salamanders are awakened by water trickling through the forest soil. They push their way up…

If Vermont’s natural advantage in the twin-state rivalry is soil quality, New Hampshire’s is surely hydropower. It is easy to forget in today’s fossil fuel-powered economy that the…

Today’s vernal pools are a gift of the most recent glacier, the Wisconsin, which retreated 10,000 years ago. The soil beneath them is impermeable, either because it has been compacted by the…

In late March or the beginning of April, trembling aspen flowers, like those of the familiar pussy willow, are among the early signs of spring. The gray-green catkins open well before the leaves come…

Given an estimated around-the-globe average of 100,000 per cubic meter of soil, it seems astonishing that springtails (the tiny creatures often called “snowfleas”) are frequently…

Like Town Meeting, which coincides roughly with the season’s start, making maple syrup is a perfectly democratic activity. It attracts farmers and loggers, quarrymen and surgeons, natives and…

Everybody knows that New Hampshire and Vermont are different. But few know just how dissimilar the so-called twin states are – they’re different right down to the core. Cross the river…

For many, the greatest joy of spring is the return of migratory birds and the chance to observe—from a polite distance, of course—their busy rituals of courtship, nesting, and tending…

In 1984, my family and I had the opportunity to spend three days at the International Forest Congress in Quebec City where conditions of the world's forest were being discussed. The Malaysian…

Two destructive organisms often take their toll on white pine in Vermont. One, the white pine weevil, wrecks the sawlog potential of white pines by killing the leading shoot: when the side branches…

In southern New England and Pennsylvania, the hemlock has been under attack by the hemlock woolly adelgid, Adelges tsugae. There is enough fear of its spreading north that Vermont, New Hampshire and…

While there are plenty of wreathmakers in Vermont, it's quite possible that no two of them make a wreath the same way. For our wreathmaking lesson, we went to Claudette Allen of Craftsbury who…

Until you get started, telling hardwood trees apart in the winter seems really difficult. But once you learn to recognize a few trees, you will find that it isn't all that hard. A good tree to…

Many people appreciate the parklike appearance of a stand of trees in which the lower branches have been removed. Trails lined by pruned trees invite us to take a walk, and for some of us sawing off…

For thousands of years before English and French were the predominant languages spoken in northern New England, the region's woods rang with a tongue sounding like a gently gurgling forest…

Virtually every single deer within a 200 square mile section of Essex County makes tracks every December to the Nulhegan Basin to spend the winter in the relative comfort of Vermont's largest…

Until we started working on Vermont Woodlands last Spring, I thought the flow of communication in a magazine was in one direction, out from the publisher to the readers. I certainly did not expect…

Selling Timber from Your Woodlands is the subject of a workshop that will be offered in January over Vermont Interactive Television. The workshop will be presented in three two-hour segments, the…