On the eve of the first measurable December snowfall, a time of thin ice and rattling beech leaves, I joined three colleagues on a rugged bushwhack to a remote corner of a Society-owned forest reservation. It's not often that the conservation business is as tangible as it was that early winter …

"May something go always unharvested! May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left, So smelling their sweetness would be no theft."

Robert Frost, 1936

My Christmas tree plantation is now a faded field of dreams. Five hundred balsams, row upon …

To the Thawing Wind

"Come with rain, O loud Southwester! Bring the singer, bring the nester…" - Robert Frost, from A Boy's Will 1913

Weary of hauling maple, ash and oak to the woodstove by late winter, I pass beneath a fragile nest of moss and mud perched in the eaves of the …

The crew grew quiet as we approached the nest. They whispered and walked slowly, carefully scanning the tree tops overhead and behind them. At the snap of a dry twig underfoot, a goshawk leaped from the rim of its nest and screamed "Kak! Kak! Kak!" as it circled above the pines. I froze …

We lost two newborn lambs that night. The earliest lambs born on our farm that spring were suddenly dead—the first time we’d ever lost sheep. The veterinarian said we’d just been lucky so far. Three lambing seasons without a bad experience? We were overdue for heartache.

While the local …

Much more than tracks in the snow

When snow returns to the forest, wild neighbors guide me through a winter of changes.

The first measurable snowfall of winter stops me cold in my tracks. I stare at a landscape instantly transformed into a Currier …