In the shadows of a February dawn, not far from the town of Greenville, Maine, wildlife biologist Henning Stabins of Plum Creek Timber Company and his colleagues were in search of Lynx…
Features
Thoreau’s Cabin in the Northwoods
On a warm, sunny day last spring, just a few weeks before the end of the school year, professional timber framer Makaio Maher stood in a small clearing in a stand of red pine trees in Newport,…
Adirondack Hermits: Solitary Life in the Northwoods
This is a story about Adirondack hermits, but the place and time in which it unfolds are as big a part of the tale as anything else. It was the late 1800s, see, and everything in America was…
Shedding Light on the Working Forest
We did a Google image search of the phrase “Vermont art,” and our computer monitor filled up with paintings of barns, cows, and church steeples. Most were lovely – clearly…
High-Hanging Fruit: Boom and Bust Seed Crops of Conifers
For portions of two days, I watched a red squirrel clipping and caching cones from the crown of a towering white spruce. It was a bumper crop that season, and thousands of cones hung in…
The Power of Microbursts
In the early morning of October 8, 2014, an autumn thunderstorm unleashed winds of more than 100 miles per hour as it crossed the western slopes of Mount Tom, a familiar landmark in the…
Where is Don Quixote?
Elizabeth had been the one person whose opinion, other than Patchett’s own, Patchett had the slightest regard for. On those occasions when Kinneson needed to get his hired man into gear,…
The Diminishing Woodpile
Fall should be a placid time. From my porch I can see ample firewood for this year and next, but it must be natural when you reach a certain age, with most of the adult responsibilities behind…
ATVs: Recreation and Conservation
ATV Users and Conservationists Find Common Ground The jagged spit of New Hampshire’s Coos County reaches north to Canada, with Vermont at its western border, Maine to the east, and the…
On Space Probes and Oak Seedlings
In November 12, 2014, an unmanned European spacecraft by the name of “Philae” landed on a comet named Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G) as it was hurtling across the galaxy at a…