I think of winter’s passing not as time, but as firewood. As the weeks progress, the woodpile shrinks; every day’s fire spends a little more of what I set aside through summer. I…

When our children were small, my husband began mowing paths through our field, grassy lanes that allowed little legs to maneuver more easily through the landscape of home. Although those small…

It was August in northern New York, and the leaves still shone an optimistic green. But Labor Day was closing in, and my wife Lisa and I would soon join millions of other parents as empty…

Every year just after Memorial Day, when the blackflies are at their cruelest, I take a Maine fishing trip with my brother Jake, his twin daughters, my two sons, and one of my daughters.…

On my family’s 80-acre Christmas tree farm in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom was a large swamp populated by northern white cedar trees. The swamp was at the base of Mount Monadnock,…

Driving through a broad valley in western Idaho eight years ago, my daughter turned toward me and said, her voice deepened with emotion, “I love this valley. It’s so…

Manic whistles rose from the woods at the edge of the lawn. The hair prickled along the back of my neck as I pressed my face to the cool porch screen and peered into the dark.…

There’s something about the angle of light on early spring days in Vermont, when the snow cover is almost gone, and the sun shines through the stark canopy right down to the forest…

I don’t know how the snowmobiles make it up or down the short, steep hill at the edge of the cornfield that borders my driveway. But their tracks drop from the top of the hill into…

Ninety years ago, my grandparents bought a swaybacked farmhouse and 20 acres of land in Orleans County, Vermont. Cedarhurst Farm, as it was known then, sat atop a sloping meadow along the…