Magazine Series

The history of agriculture is written all over the woods of southern and central New England. Old stone walls grid the landscape and seem to tie disparate stands of second-growth forest…

John Adler happens to be a logger, but more inherently he’s a thinker. Spend a little time with him and you quickly realize that whether he had chosen to be a banker, a builder,…

In 1936, the United States was still struggling to escape the Great Depression. And things were especially bad in Groveton, New Hampshire – a paper mill town. Groveton’s mill fell…

How New England's Forests Arrived, Where They Came From, and What it Means for The Future Sometime around 12,000 years ago, the first human beings arrived in New England. We don’t…

Nineteenth century author Henry David Thoreau marveled at the huge beast he saw deep in the Maine woods. Hoof to withers, the bull stood nearly seven feet tall – taller than the biggest…

It’s spring, and the snowpack is retreating. But it’s not just coltsfoot and trout lily that are emerging from beneath the melting snow. Over the years I’ve found plastic oil…

Life can be rough for the bobolink, a charismatic grassland bird whose population is declining. Halting that decline is a challenge for North American ornithologists. After all, bobolinks…

How Long Is Forever? And Can Anything Be Done in the Meantime? My wife and I own a 100-acre farm in eastern Vermont, where we raise and sell lambs, chickens, vegetables, honey, maple syrup,…

It’s important for a boy to have older male role models who aren’t their father. When I was growing up, Ed Colvin was one of those men in my life. Ed was my neighbor and my best…

A simple shot of a black bear nursing her cubs, right? Photographer Roger Irwin explains there’s more to the story. “I had put a dead cow out for the coyotes, bobcats, and fishers…