On a recent sunny day, Jeff Tarling, city arborist with Portland, Maine’s Department of Parks, Recreation, and Facilities, pulled his truck to a stop at Pine Grove Park, a 12-acre green…
Features
A Quest to Save Wild Orchids
After climbing a steep, winding road through a gap in Vermont’s Green Mountains, my car descended into Addison County, rolling past fields bright with purple aster and goldenrod. A black…
The Colonel: A Sort of Remembrance
Loving the woods, loving working in the woods – it’s difficult to do either without an appreciation of history; after all, the forest we see today reflects the actions of those who…
Cobbling Together a Living
If you listen casually to the news about the so-called gig economy these days, this idea of people freelancing instead of working for a big, stable company can seem like a new phenomenon. And…
Shadows on Craft and Culture: The Loss of Ash
THE LOSS OF ASH IS FELT BEYOND THE FOREST With snow on the ground in mid-March, trees in Connecticut’s Naugatuck State Forest presented a dense network of bare branches against a sky the…
Backcountry Zones: Where Skis Meet Trees
Once upon a time, skiers had to hike uphill for the exhilarating reward of gliding down through the trees. The earliest ski trails in New England were cut through forests in the 1930s –…
Allure of the Moon
My New Year’s resolution is to not allow political despair to affect the allure of the moon. Yesterday at about 4:30 in the afternoon, just before dark here in late December Vermont, the…
Horse Logging: It Took its Toll
George Bellerose, a photojournalist from Weybridge, Vermont, has spent the last five years documenting the experiences of people who work in the forests of Addison County, Vermont. The Vermont…
Esau Cant and the Gorbie
The sound of the gray jay evokes an image of the deep North Woods: dark green spruce trees, spire-like balsam fir, and bare-branched tamaracks silhouetted against a raw, slate-colored sky; the…
The Wood That Keeps Us Warm
Chaloux Brothers Firewood has been providing hardwood to central Vermonters since 1979. That adds up to a lot of firewood, probably more than 30,000 cords, according to Roger Chaloux, 62, who…