By Elizabeth Farnsworth
Ah, spring is in the air: lengthening days, mild breezes, bees a-buzz. To me, the most wonderful aspect of this season is the green-up, when nature throws off its brown and gray cloak and becomes awash in color. Much of this exuberant celebration takes place on the forest floor, where herbaceous plants bloom in profusion.
By Henry Lappen
As spring unfolds, many of us feel the urge to plant. But then we go into a nursery or garden center and are surrounded by thousands of plants. How does one choose?
By David Spector
Abbreviations used in email and texting, such as FWIW and IMHO, form an odd group of languages with each electronic subculture having its own jargon. Birdwatchers are no exception. At this season, early in the year with many birds moving north to their breeding grounds, the online world of birdwatchers is increasingly filled with the abbreviation “FOY,” as people note the first time in a year they encounter a bird species — a First Of Year bird: a FOY.
By Elizabeth Farnsworth
It’s March, and the woods are still drab, except for the wind-tossed evergreens, the landscape mostly cloaked in grays and browns. Today, the brightest member of my neighboring woods is a red fox — a flash of orange, white and black, now vanishing into the middle distance amid the trees.
By Lawrence J. Winship
Especially in low, wet areas and along streams under trees, you can find dozens poking up through the snow. Not really visitors from another planet, each fleshy sheath, called a spathe, hides the hundred or so flowers of the skunk cabbage Symplocarpus foetidus, the most northerly species of the diverse and very ancient arum family. (Arums show up in the fossil record in rocks formed before the breakup of the continents, and before the demise of the dinosaurs.)
By Reeve Gutsell
Whatever you’re doing, stop for a moment. Look out the window at the nearest patch of woods. What do you see? Perhaps a pair of squirrels racing up an oak tree? Some chickadees perched in a white pine? Maybe a stand of beeches or hemlocks? Now, consider what you don’t see — not because of your particular angle of view, or your specific location. Instead, consider what you don’t see because it’s not there to be seen, no matter where you look — for instance, passenger pigeons, eastern elk and towering stands of American chestnut.
By George Leoniak For the Gazette
What is tracking? Trying to pin down an answer to this question is just as elusive as the animals I track. I’ll track an animal all day with the hopes of catching a glimpse, even though 99 percent of the time I will not see the animal at the end of the trail. Yet I continue to follow the tracks as they pull me deeper into the world of that animal, deeper into my world and deeper into the world we share.
By Margaret Bullitt-Jonas For the Gazette
Climate change is no longer a distant threat. Its impacts are already being felt across the United States and around the world, with even more devastating impacts ahead unless we change course quickly. Given what we know about the climate crisis, how do we face our fear and grief without being overwhelmed? How do we move beyond denial and despair into a life filled with purpose, even joy? What sustains our spirits as we struggle to sustain the Earth?
By Reeve Gutsell
I hope this not only for those who may be hoping for a white Christmas, and not only for what a lack of snow may imply about our changing climate, but also because snow itself actually makes for better winter living conditions for our small wildlife friends, including moles, mice, voles (and their predators), various insects and an assortment of bacteria and other microscopic life. This is because snowfall causes the creation of what is known as the sub-nivean zone (from the Latin “sub” meaning “under” and “nives” meaning “snow”), which occurs after about six inches of accumulation.
By Elizabeth Farnsworth For the Gazette
Perhaps it’s said a bit too often that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet art does reveal the natural world in a way that sometimes eludes the casual observer. To paint a painting or draw a drawing or shoot that spellbinding photograph takes hours or even days of patient observation. When I sit down to sketch a plant or a panorama, I’m blessed with the luxury to just notice, and to build an appreciation that I couldn’t achieve by just passing by.
Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax