Magazine Series

From the first harsh (but oh-so-welcome) kong-ga-ree of a red-winged blackbird as early as late February, to the complex and voluptuous harmonic of a wood thrush in mid-May, our northern…

It’s a hot, humid August morning in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the kind that usually yields thunder and lightning by day’s end. But at nearby Buck Lake – just 700 feet higher in…

Mainly nocturnal and amazingly well camouflaged, eastern screech-owls can be very difficult to spot. Weighing a mere 4 to 8 ounces, these short, stocky owls often roost in tree cavities.…

At the small-town middle school I attended, all students were required to take woodshop and home economics in 4th grade. I didn’t really take to sewing, but working with wood and…

In my home state of Vermont, annual Town Meeting Day takes place at the chilly edge of spring. Vermonters rightly take pride in the usual civility of these events. That said, early March can…

Leonardo da Vinci perfected the painting technique known as “Sfumato” – from the Italian sfumare, “to evaporate like smoke” – in the 16th century. This…

Years ago, I spent considerable time investigating factors that affected the distribution and abundance of snowshoe hares. That investigation was part of a larger project examining what…

The mystique of the Catamount Trail (CT) lured me to Vermont in the 1980s. I was living in Boston and had heard of the new 300-mile trail that traveled the length of the Green Mountains, from…

On a late winter afternoon in 1994, I accompanied Professor Jan Sykora, my thesis advisor, on a field trip to the Carnegie Museum’s Powdermill Nature Reserve in Pennsylvania’s…

It’s an unseasonably warm February morning in the northern Adirondacks. Just two weeks prior, temperatures had been in minus territory. Today, however, is a balmy 40 degrees, and the…