Wood Lit

After more than a half dozen years in academia and even longer suffering from chronic depression, Jarod K. Anderson quit his job. He was tired of often joyless work in the office and…

How does a poet write an ode to a viceroy if their reader doesn’t know what a viceroy is? How do they write an elegy for ash trees without explaining why they require an elegy in the…

At age 4, living with his family in Oklahoma, Eric Orff would spend as much time as he could catching horned toads and tarantulas. “I knew that someday I would work with animals and…

Laura Waterman’s latest book reflects on an extraordinary life as a wilderness steward, homesteader, mountaineer, and writer. It also offers heart-wrenching insight into the death of her…

Spending time in the woods can prompt reflection, especially when one has decisions to make. For forester and writer Ethan Tapper, who also pens the Forest Insights column for this magazine,…

In An Immense World, Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong reveals entirely new ways to think about the world around us. Reading this mind-blowing account of animal evolution…

Walden is Thoreau’s most famous book, but for some readers, the journal he kept for his entire adult life is the favorite. Editor Geoff Wisner has selected text from the journal for a…

If you want to explore new frontiers, look no farther than the nearest forest. Each tree, from roots to branches, is home to its own complex and minute ecosystems. James Nardi’s The…

“Turtles are the most imperiled major group of animals on earth,” writes Sy Montgomery in her most recent book. “Like other wild animals, turtle populations shrink when…

In his stunning novel North Woods, Daniel Mason offers a rich, satisfying tale from the northern forest. The protagonist is a house, and its story extends from the seventeenth century to the…

In Educating Children Outdoors, Amy Butler presents her concentrated nature education knowledge from 13 years of outdoor place-based teaching in Vermont. Masquerading as compelling nature…

Stefan Mancuso would like all of us to pay more attention to trees. He’s a plant neurobiologist (a self-proclaimed “botany nerd”) who teaches at the University of Florence.…

As a young woman and Asian American urbanite, I defy almost every expectation of who an American hunter should be. So I was both captivated and inspired by Brant MacDuff’s nonfiction…

In Mason Goes Mushrooming, author Melany Kahn and her young protagonist, Mason, take readers on a series of imaginary foraging adventures, and every walk is a treasure hunt. Each adventure…

Short Hikes to the Biggest Trees in Northern Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine If you come across an especially large tree in town or on a hike, and you don’t marvel at…

Do you love mushrooms, or think you might love them if you knew more about them? This Is a Book for People Who Love Mushrooms is written for you: a fun and colorful pocket guide to a selection…

Avid readers, including me, always are on the hunt for a can’t-put-it-down, read-in-one-sitting book. Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist by…

Many years ago, I visited a small stand of virgin white pine older than the Declaration of Independence in Bradford, New Hampshire, not far from the Warner River: 20 or so trees much more than…

Susan Hand Shetterly arrived in Prospect Harbor, Maine, as a young woman, a self-described “back-to-the-lander who’d never learned from the land, but was about to.” Along…