Noah moves ahead of me in the streambed, walking through a green tunnel, the rest of the world walled off. In July, the woods are thick with leaves, and the rhododendron that crave water grow…
Magazine Series
Cecropia Moths
Twenty-five years ago, a student brought me a dead, tattered specimen of a moth. Its prodigious wingspan, colorfully banded fuzzy body, and spectacular wings were unmistakable: cecropia moths…
Wild Strawberries
As a science teacher, I love strawberries not just for their flavor, but also for their DNA. I use strawberries to show high school students how to extract DNA from living tissue. A quirk of…
From the Center
I’ve tended to think about deer over-browsing in forests as primarily a tree regeneration problem, because that damage is easy to see. In my own woods, the sad, scraggly remains of…
Behind the Pages
Approximately 50 people contribute to the words and images in each issue of the magazine. Here are some of our Summer 2023 contributors. {image2} Todd Davis (“What the Old Ones Show…
still pond
all-day rain a tentful of ghost stories evening paddle a great blue heron pulls me upriver still pond a turtle pokes his nose through a cloud hemlock shadow — a trout sips a fly
Understanding Forest Soil Carbon
In this second installment of a four-part series focused on forest carbon and supported by the Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation, forest ecologist and tree physiologist Alexandra Kosiba…
Managing Forests for Pollinators
Between 60 and 80 percent of plants growing in the Northeast, including many of our food crops, need pollinators to reproduce. While many people associate pollinator habitat with wildflower…
Safe Passage for Salamanders
Every year, on the first warm, rainy nights of spring, thousands of spotted salamanders, wood frogs, spring peepers, and other amphibians migrate en masse to their breeding wetlands in a…
Art Review: Sally Jacobson
Cyanotypes are among the oldest photographic printing processes. In 1842, English chemist, astronomer, and experimental photographer Sir John Herschel invented this technique as a way to copy…