Magazine Series

For portions of two days, I watched a red squirrel clipping and caching cones from the crown of a towering white spruce. It was a bumper crop that season, and thousands of cones hung in…

In the early morning of October 8, 2014, an autumn thunderstorm unleashed winds of more than 100 miles per hour as it crossed the western slopes of Mount Tom, a familiar landmark in the…

Elizabeth had been the one person whose opinion, other than Patchett’s own, Patchett had the slightest regard for. On those occasions when Kinneson needed to get his hired man into gear,…

Forest soils certainly benefit from the addition of plant nutrients. Elements like nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, and magnesium are the building blocks of leaves, twigs, trunks,…

On a warm August evening at Boston’s Fenway Park, everything had fallen into place by the fifth inning: The Red Sox were beating the Angels 6-0. My pals and I in right field were…

Fall should be a placid time. From my porch I can see ample firewood for this year and next, but it must be natural when you reach a certain age, with most of the adult responsibilities behind…

For 16 years, Adelaide Tyrol has been writing this Outdoor Palette column. Since she’s an accomplished artist in her own right, we thought we’d turn the tables this time and put…

Carbon has gotten a bum rap lately. Once called the fundamental building block of life, it’s now better known as the thing that’s going to destroy the planet. As if this…

Last autumn, at our first writers conference, we set up a table featuring 10 different brands of maple syrup from around New England, New York, and Quebec and encouraged people to pick their…

Fenceposts have always baffled me. Why would anyone take a perfectly good tree, cut it down, dig a hole to set it in, and then spend the next 20 years watching it decay? In my early days of…