by Northern Woodlands Summer 2019

Our Regulars: Contributor Profiles

This magazine wouldn’t exist without our many contributors. Over the coming year we’d like to introduce some of them to you, starting with the 10 regular columnists whose work currently appears in every issue. In the spirit of our anniversary, we asked each of them what they were doing 25 years ago.

Twenty-five years ago, VIRGINIA BARLOW was co-founding this magazine and writing the first Calendar and the first Overstory columns (the latter changed in 2016 to The Understory when she ran out of trees).

BENJAMIN LORD is our house forager. When this magazine was first published, Lord was only 16, but already out exploring. “I was living with a back-country trail crew in Sierra National Forest in California, rolling rocks, learning to use a two-man crosscut saw, and playing in the mud,” he said.

The Ecological Etymologist’s name is GIÖM. Twenty-five years ago, she was “in Tasmania, hiking down a mountain through the tops of the trees. I will never forget the feeling of stepping on those branches and being unable to tell whether there was solid ground beneath them. (There wasn’t.)”

TODD MCLEISH is our Discoveries columnist. “[Twenty-five years ago] I was an obsessed birder, the spokesman for the local electric company, and just beginning to think about writing about the natural world,” McLeish said.

MARY HOLLAND keeps us all Naturally Curious. We weren’t surprised to learn that a quarter-century ago she was offering her own hands-on “Knee-high Nature Programs” to K-2 children.

BRETT MCLEOD teaches us Tricks of the Trade. He found his calling as a “pracademic” 25 years ago, as a high school freshman, while shadowing a forester. “I think that having callused hands is just as important as having a sharp mind,” he told us.

JERRY JENKINS shoots and writes The Photographers Notebook. “Twenty-five years ago, which was not that long, I was involved in big biological surveys of the Adirondack lands of the large paper companies,” Jenkins told us.

SUSAN C. MORSE has been our resident tracker for 21 years. She founded her own nonprofit, Keeping Track, 25 years ago, a group that’s since trained thousands of citizen-science volunteers.

ROBERT KIMBER writes about life Upcountry. Twenty-five years ago, he was “cutting firewood, fishing, teaching English and translating, running around in the woods, swimming with Rita and our son, Greg, and writing with Rita for a fall term in Syktivkar, Russia.”

ADELAIDE TYROL has been writing and providing illustrations for the magazine for 20 years. In 1994, she “was juggling motherhood, being an artist, spending time outdoors, and painting large format backdrops in New York City – and I am still doing all four 25 years later!”

by Northern Woodlands

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Jun 11, 2022

I have not seen Robert Kimber’s articles recently. I so enjoy his perspective and miss them. Is he still a contributor?

Thank you and kind regards,

Chris

Chris E Dubé

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Our Regulars: Contributor Profiles

by Northern Woodlands

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