By Lawrence J. Winship
What is the wisdom shown by “wise trees”? Is it perhaps that they appear to cease striving and simply endure because growth is made impossible by the “sure” arrival of cold, of scarce and pale light, and of water frozen solid? Or might the verse call to mind the “wisdom” of genetic information encoded in the tree’s DNA?
By John Sinton
When I was fly fishing for pink salmon some years ago in the Pacific Northwest, I hooked an enormous steelhead, which is a sea-run rainbow trout. That steelhead was twice the size of the five-pound salmon I’d caught, but I wondered why one was called salmon and the other, trout.
By Tom Litwin
On my desk is an old Kodak photo of my Dad and me, standing in front of our home. With snow piled high, we had just finished digging out our driveway — my snow shovel proudly displayed. On the edge of the photograph is stamped 1961, so I was 10 years old. While working at my desk I sometimes drift off into the photo with memories of sledding, snowball fights, snow huts, maple syrup on snow, skiing and coveted school snow days. There are few weather events like snowstorms that are as intertwined with our culture and lifestyle, yet they have humble beginnings.
By Christine Hatch
When the bulldozers come to the field site you’ve affectionately spent five years measuring and studying in minute detail, it feels like someone is tearing up your living room and smearing mud on the couch. As a geologist, it is also a rare and wonderful opportunity to lift off over 100 years of human land use and look underneath, and back in time to what once was.
By Laurie Sanders
If you’re interested in natural history, the Connecticut River Valley is a great place to live. The combination of geology, hydrology, human history and climate create a remarkable diversity of habitats. In Northampton, where most of my conservation work has focused, you can explore 40 different types of natural communities — from rocky summits and cliffs to open marshes, floodplain forests and rivers.
By Katie Koerten
During my stint as a bird rehabilitation intern in Vermont years ago, we had some memorable moments. Once, someone brought in a juvenile bald eagle that had been shot near the Canadian border. We were horrified at the crime of shooting such a bird, but excited to be in charge of its care. It made a full recovery and we released it at the Connecticut River, where it promptly flew across into New Hampshire. But the experience that made perhaps the biggest impression on me was the time we got a call about a common loon that had been found in a parking lot, listless and unable to fly.
By Joshua Rose
The back door is their favorite. Not that they avoid the front. I see a few there. The front is just too clean, bright and sunny. Not enough hiding places. Plus, we humans are always blundering through, destroying their webs.
By Michael Dover
“Integrated” refers both to using a variety of methods to deal with a pest problem, and to considering the pest as part of an ecosystem — an interdependent system of species.
By David Spector
In June 1919, aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown flew in a Vickers Vimy airplane from Newfoundland to Ireland in what is often considered the first nonstop transatlantic flight. If instead of heading east they had flown south, they would have traversed an even longer transatlantic route across the western Atlantic Ocean to northern South America. They would not, though, have been the first to accomplish that flight.
By Lawrence J. Winship
Because of the pandemic, I’ve spent much more time in our gardens this year. There is so much to see and do on our little half-acre lot. Over the decades, trees have filled in and gardens expanded and, through neglect, much has “gone wild.” New England gardeners know all too well what happens when you take your watchful eye off bittersweet, wild grape and multiflora rose. Add in hundreds of tree seedlings and you get the picture.
Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax