Magazine Series

The transition from late winter to early spring is my favorite time for wildlife photography. The warming snow pack is pock-marked with tracks everywhere; some creatures are seeking mates,…

While it’s pretty audacious to reduce the Northeast, a region with hundreds of unique ecosystems, to three generalized parts, if pushed, you can do it. There’s the North Woods,…

Among the many priorities crowding school budgets, environmental education often gets short shrift. Many educators see the value of bringing more nature into the classroom, but the reality of…

We’re used to tracking spring’s progression through flowers (colt’s foot to purple trillium to columbine) or bird sightings (phoebes to sapsuckers to warblers). Spend time…

If you’re considering building a log structure, you’ll need to learn to scribe logs. In most cases, you’ll be scribing for a saddle notch, used to join two logs…

Ask a group of foresters, tree farmers, or loggers how to promote American beech, and there will likely be a pause, a few grins, perhaps a chuckle or two, and then, the faint sound of…

“Dead wood coming down.” “All clear, Bear.” “Thanks!” THUD. A dead oak branch crashes to the ground after a brief but thorough exchange between two…

My friend John the blacksmith lent me an old book, A Natural History of Trees, by Donald Culross Peattie, which is both quaint and authoritative. Maybe it’s this combination of…

The feeding habits of porcupines are far more diverse than many people realize. Cambium, phloem, foliage, buds, flowers, fruits, and nuts comprise the mainstay of Erethizon dorsatum’s…

In winter at Halibut Point, a rocky headland on the Massachusetts coast, the drama begins at dawn. A stout gust rips the white from whitecaps and sprays the shore with ice that tinkles like…