When I was a boy of about eight, I used to hunt deer out of a little 12x16 camp that sat up in a bowl on the top of Shatterack Mountain in Rupert, Vermont. My father and Junior Harwood had…
Features
The Root of the Problem
As far as trees are concerned, root damage is the root of all evil. Well, most of it, anyway. No matter what symptoms are visible – early fall color (a sign of stress), sudden death of…
Marking Timber
We are easy to spot. Look for boots spattered with blue paint. Blue paint dots our wool hats in the winter and speckles our hair and baseball caps in the summer. In the fall, because the…
Rust in Peace
“There’s a place called Faraway Meadow We never shall mow in again, Or such is the talk at the farmhouse: The meadow is finished with men.” —From “The Last…
North Country Numbers: A New Look at the Forest-Based Economy
Imagine yourself driving into a North Country town one afternoon and finding a business there that employed 92,771 people and turned out $14.4 billion in manufactured products. You’d…
Tale of the Tick: How Lyme Disease is Expanding Northward
It’s only natural to take a human-centered view of the world. Through this lens, Lyme disease is a ferocious malady that is on the march north. In New Hampshire, researchers recently…
Clearing the Air: Outdoor Wood Boilers Face Regulation
Tom Powers, a retired Air Force tech sergeant and a member of the Peru Town Council, keeps an eye on a wide range of issues that affect this northeastern New York town – zoning problems,…
An Outdoor Life
Sheldon and Penelope Pennoyer will tell you they moved to their hilltop land in Greenfield, New Hampshire, because they wanted their boys to do farm chores. Back when their first child was…
Where the Trees Grow Tall and Straight
In the kitchen cabinet trade, hard maple is king these days. Also widely used for flooring and trim, hard maple is highly valued for its durability and light-colored sapwood. As Dave Clements…
As Still as a Stump: How to Have a Close Encounter of the Wild Kind
Aldo Leopold wrote, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” I am definitely among the latter. It refreshes my soul to see wild animals up close and…