Wood Lit

As a young woman and Asian American urbanite, I defy almost every expectation of who an American hunter should be. So I was both captivated and inspired by Brant MacDuff’s nonfiction…

In Mason Goes Mushrooming, author Melany Kahn and her young protagonist, Mason, take readers on a series of imaginary foraging adventures, and every walk is a treasure hunt. Each adventure…

Short Hikes to the Biggest Trees in Northern Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine If you come across an especially large tree in town or on a hike, and you don’t marvel at…

Do you love mushrooms, or think you might love them if you knew more about them? This Is a Book for People Who Love Mushrooms is written for you: a fun and colorful pocket guide to a selection…

Avid readers, including me, always are on the hunt for a can’t-put-it-down, read-in-one-sitting book. Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist by…

Many years ago, I visited a small stand of virgin white pine older than the Declaration of Independence in Bradford, New Hampshire, not far from the Warner River: 20 or so trees much more than…

Susan Hand Shetterly arrived in Prospect Harbor, Maine, as a young woman, a self-described “back-to-the-lander who’d never learned from the land, but was about to.” Along…

How Gifford Pinchot, Frederick Law Olmsted, and a Band of Foresters Rescued America’s Public Lands In This Land Was Saved for You and Me: How Gifford Pinchot, Frederick Law Olmsted, and…

The best writers, whether they focus on fiction or truth, are first and foremost storytellers. Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx is among the best. In her slim volume, Fen, Bog & Swamp: A…

At the age of 49, Susan Fox Rogers had reached an inflection point in life, single and with no children, both parents recently passed away, and immersed in a happy teaching and writing career…

I grew up on a large tree farm in western Connecticut, and my family’s backyard tree nursery was surrounded by northern white-cedars. White-tailed deer browsed the trees’ lower…

From the hammock where I read Beaverland, Leila Philip’s stunning new book, a beaver dam sits less than 10 feet away. Behind that dam rests a marsh filled with waterfowl. Beaverland…

How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed The Animal Adventurer’s Guide is an irresistible and accessible guide to backyard wildlife. Author Susie Spikol, a…

Our sprawling East Coast cities, often visited for their history and culture, don’t usually attract naturalists in search of wild flora. But perhaps that will change: Urban Lichens: A…

Many of us turn to the natural world to gain perspective, to learn, to find order and beauty in species and systems outside ourselves. While smartphones and social media have the potential to…

Last spring, I woke in the wee hours of the morning to the sound of someone rearranging my metal deck furniture. The “someone” was a bear. For those living in and near the forests…

“Without a plan, with only an impulse to walk,” is how Ben Shattuck set off on the first of the journeys he shares in Six Walks in the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau. At the…

Todd Davis’s poetry asks to be read aloud, in the woods or streamside. I’ve carried his books into the spitting snow of a March lambing paddock, read them perched on ash stumps…

150 Years of Fisheries Conservation and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Fisheries science is often conducted out of sight – in salt marshes and southern bayous, in the hatchery and…