Open a hydrology map of a northeastern watershed, and you’ll see networks of blue lines: delicate threads of headwater streams starting high in the mountains, crossing contours to merge…

About 20 years ago, when my wife, Rita, and I were still renovating our Maine farmhouse, we did much of our refurbishing with materials scrounged from old buildings that were falling to the…

Last October, in Weld, Maine, I hung from a rope in the canopy of a 41-year-old American chestnut tree on the property of author and naturalist Bernd Heinrich. The tree bore the scars of a…

The natural world holds countless examples of things intricately connected and seemingly perfectly designed. One spectacular example is the relationship between the ruby-throated hummingbird…

“There is, I think, great hope for the continued presence of nature in the metropolis.” — Elizabeth Barlow, The Forests and Wetlands of New York City, 1971 Surrounded by a…

White-tailed deer are so abundant in the eastern United States that it may be hard to believe the species was absent in many areas, including most of the Northeast, just a century ago.…

While orb webs – with their appealing spiral geometry – are the most familiar, spiderwebs take an amazing diversity of forms, each an ingenious fit for its maker’s hunting…

Noah moves ahead of me in the streambed, walking through a green tunnel, the rest of the world walled off. In July, the woods are thick with leaves, and the rhododendron that crave water grow…

Elisa Schine, a graduate student in forestry at the University of Maine, is accustomed to being in predominantly male academic and professional settings. Although forestry has become much more…

Opened in the autumn of 2021, the Autism Nature Trail at Letchworth State Park is breaking new ground for outdoor accessibility and education, especially for school-age children with autism.…