Magazine Series

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…

Every community has its hubs: those people who tie disparate strands of the network together, who collect and distribute information. For the forest products industry in northern New England,…

For six wintry months, trees have appeared as woodblock reliefs or iron sculptures, their bare limbs framed against a cold horizon. But as spring unfolds, stark branches morph into soft…

For those of you struggling to learn bird identification, here’s an innovative system to help you name any species you encounter. That’s right. No more pesky field guides. Your…