In his New York Times best-seller A Walk in the Woods, author Bill Bryson mourns the loss of the “massively graceful” American chestnut: “There has never been any tree like it.…

There is nothing wild about most wild rice. Most was grown in a “paddy” in California, harvested by machines, processed in factories, and finally wrapped in packages of cardboard and…

Most people, when they look at a tree, look up. Understandable. The trunk lofts limbs skyward, unfurling a shimmering sunlight-gulping net of leaves. But with a little imagination (and, more…

It’s human nature to categorize, to organize, to put things in boxes. Take seasons. Conventional wisdom holds that Labor Day weekend is the last weekend of summer, and thus we are now firmly…

Can your eyes ID these pods?

Fresh tracks frozen in the November snowpack reveal where, earlier this morning, a doe and two fawns browsed on raspberry canes, red maple stump suckers, and selected mushrooms. Following their…

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. The opposite of a republican is not a democrat, it’s an anarchist. The opposite of a beef farmer is not a vegan, but rather someone who…

It was a late-May afternoon in central Oklahoma and big time thunderstorms were expected to form soon. I was there as part of a 30-person tornado research team – a Vermont weatherman’s…

The Center for Northern Woodlands Education is pleased to announce that Elise Tillinghast of Thetford Center, Vermont, has been selected as our new executive director. She will begin her duties on…

Along the apple’s aged bole, fall rains had tamped the burst of feathers between flattened riparian grass, but the white dots on black were unmistakable. “Downy,” my pop said,…

If you’ve been to camp or a business seminar recently, you may have played an icebreaker called “Two Truths and a Lie.” The rules are simple: tell two truths and one lie about…

To catch those of you who didn’t read the first blog post in this series up, our 20-year-old log cabin is rotting and full of carpenter ants. Rather than fix it, we’re cutting our losses…

What kind of egg is this, shining in the sunlight? Photo by Bryan Pfeiffer.

When felling trees, Plan A has the tree falling right where you want it to go. Once you hang one up, though - and even the best of us do - the game changes and it's time for Plan B. If you've…

When an undertaking is just too big for one person, folks tend to form groups. We’re all familiar with this in a blue collar sense – the concept of a barn raising, say. But the idea that…

Imagine a life that smells like Christmas – that rich, deep-woods aroma of balsam that fills living rooms every December. For Jack and Wendy Newmeyer, it’s the cozy smell of livelihood.…

Move over emerald ash-borer and hemlock wooly adelgid. There’s a new invasive pest in town, and it may be coming to a viburnum near you. The viburnum leaf beetle, (Pyrrhalta viburni) was first…

Warming Up with Wood Pellets A History of Fire Towers in the Northeast Lessons from Last Year's Foliage Trapping in the 21st Century Warblers and Ice Cream, Foraging for Wild Nuts, Chainsaws…

Hidden in cattails, I was hoping to photograph moose feeding in a nearby cove. Suddenly a V-shaped wake appeared in the water and a muskrat swam vigorously towards me. The creature resembled an…

Dianne Shullenberger, Yellow Peony, 12” x 11”, fabric and thread, 2006 The surprise in Dianne Shullenberger’s work is that her “paintings” are not made with paint. Her…