Wood Lit

This is an unusual book, deceptive in its apparent simplicity. Gordon Russell chronicles his observations of Great Meadow, a marshland in New Hampshire, from 2000 through 2014. The power of…

In The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, biographer Andrea Wulf provides an intimate view of a man who spent a lifetime sharing what he learned with the scientific…

A centennial edition of The Holy Earth was recently published, and it brings back the words of Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954), a remarkable individual whose contributions to the well-being of…

One day last fall I trailed behind Ted Levin when he went to check up on his snakes. The day was so hot that most were out of sight in cool rock recesses, but even now, recalling the sound of…

I’ll never forget the day I learned that certain bees nest on the ground. At nine years old, I was the self appointed neighborhood nature guide. One summer, as we entered the woods, a…

A frog that sounds like a duck. A fairy shrimp that swims upside down. A fat salamander with bright yellow spots. These are some of the inhabitants of vernal pools whose lives are explored in…

Over the last 35 years, Phyllis Austin has earned a well-deserved reputation as Maine’s premier journalist covering forestry and environmental issues. In 2008, she published her first…

The Forest Unseen is, at first glance, a painstaking scientific exploration into the lives of organisms inhabiting a one-meter circle of rocky, old-growth forest floor – but that is just…

Not so very long ago, collecting the eggs of birds was one of the most common activities in the life of budding young naturalists. However, with the passage of such foundational conservation…

Apples are so common that it is easy to mistake them for commonplace. In Apples of Uncommon Character: 123 Heirlooms, Modern Classics, and Little-Known Wonders, Rowan Jacobsen entertainingly…

North American fields and forests harbor mycological treasures, but the good edibles constitute a tiny fraction of the myriad mushroom species. A good field guide is a reliable roadmap to the…

Lost in the Woods: A Photographic Fantasy is an award-winning children’s picture book that is sure to delight young and old. The photographs will enthrall young children, while adults…

Bear-ly There is a Moonbeam Award-winning book by Maine children’s author and illustrator Rebekah Raye. In this book, Raye deftly blends rich, informative text on black bears with…

Back when I was a boy, despite the fact that my father wasn’t a deer hunter, I’d always know when it was deer season. Even though we lived in a town where the largest industry was…

As an editor I see a lot of first-person writing cross my desk, and the majority of it is the written equivalent of a selfie. The compulsion to report on oneself goes back millions of years,…

What does one do with a forest? For the past few centuries, North Americans have typically answered that question in one of three ways. One answer was preservation, to leave the forest alone…

In the late 1980s, while in graduate school, I learned of mysterious mass die-offs (and eventual extinctions) of many frog species worldwide – events that played a big role in guiding me…

Readers interested in animal behavior are likely familiar with books such as Mind of the Raven, Geese of Beaver Bog, and Of Wolves and Men (the first two by Bernd Heinrich, the last by Barry…

Whenever one hears about bees these days, it is almost invariably to the European honey bee, Apis mellifera, that the reference is being made. Indeed, the health of this species is of…

Most news about climate change focuses on the dramatic and the exotic: melting glaciers, rising sea level, the loss of polar bear habitat. Boston University field biologist Richard B. Primack…