Magazine Series

When I took on the responsibilities as executive director and publisher of The Center for Northern Woodlands Education (our formal moniker), the tangible parts of the organization were laid…

The United Nations has coined 2010 to be The International Year of Biodiversity, so it’s only fitting that insects play a starring role in the pages of our summer issue. Insects, after…

At a recent meeting of maple producers in New England, I asked the question, “How many people would never tap a red maple?” Half the audience raised their hands. There were a…

Working outside on a sunny afternoon in early March, I’ll catch the scent of somethinglike burnt sugar, and it will take me a minute to remember what it is. It will have been a year…

I like to think of Sarah Knock as a topographer. She records the surface features of water as light purls across it, showing us with amazing verisimilitude the fusion of light and liquid.…

When Rita and I left the fleshpots of Boston and Cambridge and moved to Temple nearly forty years ago (forty years!), we made that move with the blessing of our friend Molly Gregory. Molly…

Sharpening an ax is not difficult, but it does require a basic understanding of how the business end of an ax works. An ax is almost never used to cut perpendicularly through wood fibers;…

In forestry circles, monocultures don’t get high marks. Most planted forests have just one kind of tree, and because of this they are often looked down upon as biological Levittowns:…

If this story were a movie, it might best begin with a flashback. After the opening credits, perhaps backed by an ominous soundtrack, we’d be transported back two years, to a happier…

When visitors arrived at Ed Lanigan’s 309-acre tree farm in Alton, New Hampshire, he waved them over to a row of sugar maples he had tapped a couple of weeks earlier. The March breeze…