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 –…
Features
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…
Chipmunks and Truffles - A Recipe for a Healthy Forest
While on an afternoon hike last fall, I sat down at the base of a large tree to take in what might be going unnoticed. Within seconds, a chipmunk appeared from behind a pile of large rocks.…
Cavities are Good
Never mind the dreaded news at the dentist’s office – cavities are good! Dead, broken-topped snags full of large and small cavities aren’t worth anything at the mill.…
Big Reed Forest Reserve: A Place Out of Time
We were maybe 10 minutes down the trail when Nancy Sferra made the announcement. “We’re now officially in old growth.” A few steps had taken us from one type of forest, a…
Trout Fishing on the Cultural Divide
Ethan Pond, a small pond high in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, is not only where a trout-fishing addiction began for me, but it’s also where some of the earliest observations of…
Seeing the Climate Through the Trees
Forests are complex systems. The Earth’s climate is a complex system. When you put them together, you get something even more complex. Complexity upon complexity, as it were. It’s…