My Secret Ledge

My Secret Ledge

Photo of the ledge by Christopher Zajac for Estuary magazine. When I go there now, two or three times every week, I walk to the end of one road and trudge up a broken old woods road into the state forest. I step over ruts, where puddles linger long and narrow in dirt...
Fear of rattlesnakes

Fear of rattlesnakes

Biologist Tom Tyning scrambles up a ledge in Massachusetts, looking for rattlesnakes he will study in his lab and then return to the wild. The snakes are rare because poachers steal them and sell them illegally. (Photo by Christine Woodside) From Appalachia...
Encounter with a hare

Encounter with a hare

Lepus americanus. Photo by Walter Siegmund. Past midnight I awakened and crept behind the mountain shelter, over dry leaves behind the back wall. Wind rustled from the open ridge of Vermont’s Mount Tom toward the spruces. I wore my improvised headlamp, a flashlight on...
Trail of Memories

Trail of Memories

Heading up the Undermountain Trail with Talley. Photo by Julie Bidwell Yankee Magazine, March 2017 One bright Monday afternoon, I step onto the Undermountain Trail below Bear Mountain, in northwest Connecticut. I climb east. The trail rolls mostly straight up, but...