Wood Lit

On Sunday afternoon, I picked up Castle Freeman’s Go With Me, and started reading it around 4:00. I finished sometime after 9:00, stopping only to throw more wood in the woodstove. I…

Coastal northern California, with its rainy, temperate climate and rugged terrain, is home to some of the oldest – and tallest – trees in North America. These ancient trees, mostly…

Donald Kroodsma began his life’s work while in graduate school almost 40 years ago when he tried to figure out how a Bewick’s wren learned his songs. Does he learn songs from his father or…

Reports are increasing about the impact of world-wide deforestation on global warming. A correspondent for the U.K. news magazine, The Economist, for example, wrote in a special edition titled…

“Nature is a magic show of the highest order,” writes Bernd Heinrich in The Snoring Bird, his very seductive personal narrative. “I can hardly think of a greater grandeur and…

This anthology brings together stories, essays, and poems from 42 remarkably diverse authors, from trout-fishing notables Ernest Schwiebert and Robert Behnke to poets John Hollander and W. B…

Perhaps the most striking thing you first notice about the book Wild Neighbors (besides the stunning, full color, close-up portrait of a pileated woodpecker that graces the cover) is its size.…

Frank Tozer is part of a growing group of people who see knowledge of wild plants as an important contribution to our collective future. This pursuit of knowledge need not be just an…

If you consider that an estimated 25 percent of the energy used in the U.S. is spent heating buildings, and you feel that it would be beneficial if that energy came from sources other than the…

In Golden Wings and Hairy Toes: Encounters with New England’s Most Imperiled Wildlife, Todd McLeish takes the reader on a lively and enlightening adventure with field biologists working to…

There’s sort of a running gag in the Northern Woodlands office: “Who has the copy of New England Wildlife?” Hardly a week goes by without one of us having to raid another’s desk to nab…

In the old and idiosyncratic genre of wilderness literature, our American masterpiece is Thoreau’s Walden: Or, Life in the Woods. As with many perennially great books, when people overcome…

Through the 31 essays that make up Letters from Eden: A Year at Home, in the Woods, author Julie Zickefoose demonstrates how truly at home she is on the 80 acres of forests and fields where…

My first reaction to the title of this book was to question how a distinguished scholar of conservation history could link “war” with an examination of forestry in America. Sam Hays began…

Anyone who’s keeps an almanac or “kitchen book” to record nature’s comings and goings in their backyard is following in the footsteps of Aldo Leopold. He said that those who seek to…

The Winooski River runs in a generally northwesterly direction through northern Vermont, connecting, among other towns, Montpelier, the state capitol, with Burlington, the state’s largest…

The author of this remarkable book states that his goal is “to present an accurate account of the seriousness of today’s global environmental challenges…and to offer a strategy for…

Through his books and his work as an educator, Tom Wessels teaches people how to observe and interpret ecological landscapes. His latest book, The Myth of Progress, reflects something of a new…

Like no other element of the New England landscape, stone walls relentlessly remind us of the challenging existence faced by those who settled this corner of the world. Stone walls chronicle…

“With all the Web sites and links, with the near infinity of information available, who has time to – who wants to – read?” Melanie Simo poses this guilt-inducing question at…