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Magazine Series

Editor’s Note

On the first 70 degree day of the year we took a UTV ride up to the top of the ridge behind camp, G and I. She’s originally from Wyoming, so she sees the forests around here with fresh…

Top Flowers: Adaptations for Living on the Alpine Edge

Anyone who’s made his or her way up a mountain is familiar with the sometimes startling transformation of the landscape, from leafy hardwood stands to thick and prickly green cathedrals…

Sex and the Single Bird

Blackbirds do it. Chickadees do it. Even educated emus do it. Some birds are cheaters. Their trysts, dalliances, one-morning stands, and other infidelities would constitute a racy script for…

Outdoor Palette

Many of us are familiar with Rebecca Merrilees’ work from the indispensable field guide Trees of North America, which she illustrated 34 years ago. It is probably on all of our…

Misfit Migrants

Pick your favorite sign of spring: squirrels mating, mud oozing, maples flowering. Mine is a vulture soaring. Change in the air is a naked, ruddy head gliding in on big wings. But more than…

Cutting the Apron Strings: How Young Animals Disperse

Not long ago, as the ice went out on my local brook, I came across some fresh beaver cuttings and a scent-mound in an area that showed sign of having been dammed before. Did the fresh sign…

The Treehouse Guys

Like house designers everywhere, James “B’fer” Roth starts with the building site. Though unlike most, it’s not the soil or topography that he studies first. He looks…

From Forest to Floor: the Gym a Community Built

This year, when Moderator Ann Wilson raps her gavel, calling the Craftsbury Town Meeting to order in the new Craftsbury Academy Gymnasium, she’ll be standing on a forest of local trees…

Is Soil Scarification Good or Bad for the Woods?

Although the word is related to scarring – something you’d think we’d want to avoid – soil scarification [pronounced scare-ification] is a legitimate silvicultural…

1,000 Words

While on a late-spring hike, photographer Frank Kaczmarek came across a bald-faced hornet nest that had dislodged from a tree. He took out his camera and captured these new adults emerging…