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# Chris Woodside

Writer and editor

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://chriswoodside.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [They wrote with me on Squam Lake. It was wonderful.](https://chriswoodside.com/they-wrote-with-me-on-squam-lake-it-was-wonderful/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”]I got home a few days ago from leading my writing workshop at Rockywold-Deephaven Camps on New Hampshire’s Squam Lake. Writers walked alone, observed, wrote many words clustered around a warm fire, talked about
- [Ideas on a creative practice, a very short asynchronous workshop](https://chriswoodside.com/ideas-on-a-creative-practice-a-very-short-asynchronous-workshop/) - In this fourteen-minute-nine-second mini-workshop, I offer advice on building or tweaking a regular writing practice and share ideas from writers and coaches who have inspired me. If this inspires you, consider joining me for my workshop Writing with Woodside.
- [Writing with Woodside, the workshop I wanted and could not find](https://chriswoodside.com/writing-with-woodside-the-workshop-i-wanted-and-could-not-find/) - Writing with Woodside is a unique workshop designed to reinforce your voice and your inspiration through walking, observation, and writing sessions in a beautiful lake-and-mountain place. I started running workshops on this model back in 2011 with a winter session evening class at Wesleyan University's former Green Street Arts Center, called Writing in Motion. Since
- [Imagining an uncomfortable talk with Aldo Leopold](https://chriswoodside.com/imagining-an-uncomfortable-talk-with-aldo-leopold/) - Aldo Leopold (U.S. Forest Service) Connecticut Woodlands, Fall 2011 Aldo Leopold was a hunter. The icon of the environmental movement, the man who taught us not to exploit the land but understand its complexities, wasn’t a bloodthirsty killer. He believed that hunting taught us the struggles of the natural world that humans belong in, whether
- [Writing from the Mountains: A Weekend Workshop with Appalachia Journal](https://chriswoodside.com/writing-from-the-mountains-a-weekend-workshop-with-appalachia-journal/) - I am delighted to be again leading this workshop for the Appalachian Mountain Club October 24-26, 2025. Writers of all levels and interests, join the mountains with the landscape of your writing ideas at AMC's beautiful Cardigan Lodge in Alexandria, New Hampshire, with me, Appalachia journal editor-in-chief for the past two decades, and Elissa Ely,
- [Coming Next Spring: New Jersey's Natures with a Chapter by Me](https://chriswoodside.com/coming-next-spring-new-jerseys-natures-with-a-chapter-by-me/) - New Jersey’s Natures takes up the challenge of expanding academic and popular conceptions of New Jersey and its landscapes through the lens of environmental history. Scholars’ essays showcase the ways in which nature is integral to understandings of the state and its past as well as its future. These essays show that New Jersey should no
- [The Little Library](https://chriswoodside.com/the-little-library/) - A few years ago my brother-in-law built an outdoor library with a long, tall window he found at the dump. I had wanted a Little Library for a while, and I registered it with Little Free Library, Charter #159455. Almost every day, I notice people stopping by, perusing the books or adding some. Sometimes people
- [Rest in peace Gregory L. Norris](https://chriswoodside.com/rest-in-peace-gregory-l-norris/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”]Greg Norris died on Monday, May 5. He was the most enthusiastic writer to attend my second independent writing workshop back in 2016. Since then, I have remained in touch with him and a
- [The Bears Next Door](https://chriswoodside.com/the-bears-next-door/) - [et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] A short walk from a suburban driveway in Canton, Connecticut, a black bear and her cub sleep in their den, a shallow depression in leaf duff underneath a small brush pile and a few downed trees. State biologists Jason Hawley and Melissa Ruszczyk and technicians Kaitlyn Place and
- [Outdoor trudging as career builder: my interview with Mentors Collective](https://chriswoodside.com/outdoor-trudging-as-career-builder-my-interview-with-mentors-collective/) - In an interview just posted on Mentors Collective, I talk about the many parallels between pushing one’s body and mind in the wilderness and challenging oneself in the workplace or at home. Carrying my gear uphill, setting up camp, feeling cold and uncomfortable—sometimes almost hypothermic—means that I never mind when the elevators break, when I
- [Solo hiking as personal growth: me on Vision Pros podcast](https://chriswoodside.com/solo-hiking-vision-pros-podcast/) - How do you define courage? What does grubby rock scrambling have to do with personal growth? What obligation does a woman have to teach resiliency to daughters? I talked about all these and more on this new episode of Vision Pros.
- [Short fiction debut](https://chriswoodside.com/short-fiction-debut/) - Running Wild Press's new Short Story Anthology arrived yesterday with my story, "Pumping Station Road." It tells the story of Lloyd, a lobbyist and trail runner whose big solo run of the length of Connecticut from east to west hits a snag. Lloyd believes he cares deeply about living an ethical life that respects community.
- [The ever moving river of ideas](https://chriswoodside.com/the-ever-moving-river-of-ideas/) - [et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]Brenda Ueland, one of my favorite writing teachers, said that most writers will never reach the end of the “ever moving river of ideas.” Many writers I know don’t realize just how deep and wide that river flows inside their minds. Writers sometimes feel that time evaporates before they
- [Weighed down by loss, we took to the trails](https://chriswoodside.com/weighed-down-by-loss-we-took-to-the-trails/) - My husband and I were in a bad place one summer, so we left home and went into the mountains for three days. Nat had just had another contract end—the second time in fifteen months. It wasn’t his fault. He worked on yearly contracts, and the economy was bad just then. The old ways of
- [The Bears Next Door: Black Bears in Connecticut](https://chriswoodside.com/the-bears-next-door-back-bears-in-connecticut/) - A short walk from a suburban driveway in Canton, Connecticut, a black bear and her cub sleep in their den, a shallow depression in leaf duff underneath a small brush pile and a few downed trees. State biologists Jason Hawley and Melissa Ruszczyk and technicians Kaitlyn Place and Megan Graham quietly surround the den. They
- [To Hear a Forest](https://chriswoodside.com/to-hear-a-forest/) - [et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]One warm morning I took a break while hiking near Cardigan Mountain. I sat on a tent platform in an empty campsite and swung my boots over the platform edge. The leaves began to rustle, first faintly, then louder and louder, the way they do when the wind kicks
- [Going Over the Mountain](https://chriswoodside.com/going-over-the-mountain-one/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.21.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]Order your copy or e-book today! Going Over the Mountain is a gorgeous tale of finding strength—and peace—in the mountains, and of raising girls to do the same. It’s a reflection on entering the woods as a follower, a solo traveler,
- [Book Talk October 15 at Bank Square Books](https://chriswoodside.com/book-talk-october-15-at-bank-square-books/) - Save the date. I will give a talk and reading from my wilderness memoir Going Over the Mountain at the new location of Bank Square Books, 80 Stonington Road, Mystic, Connecticut, on Tuesday, October 15 at 6 p.m. Going Over the Mountain: One Woman's Journey from Follower to Solo Hiker and Back maps the evolution
- [I'll be on Hiker Trash Radio June 3](https://chriswoodside.com/ill-be-on-hiker-trash-radio-june-3/) - Pick up your favorite trail snacks and get ready to hear my hiking story on Hiker Trash Radio, the podcast where Doc introduces you to all sorts of characters who have taken the trail into themselves and become different people in the process. The episode with me posts on June 3. I’ll talk about my
- [Going Over the Mountain reading at Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore](https://chriswoodside.com/going-over-the-mountain-reading-at-wesleyan-rj-julia-bookstore/) - Join me for my next reading from Going Over the Mountain, Wednesday, October 18 from 5-6 p.m. at Wesleyan R.J. Julia Bookstore! Sign up here. Get your own copy and have it signed. I will read you a story. A chapters other audiences haven't heard yet. I've read to audiences about my clueless following of my
- [Launch party on September 10 at Breakwater Books. Reading September 13 at the Norwich Bookstore in Vermont](https://chriswoodside.com/205279-2/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Breakwater Books will host a launch party on Sunday, September 10 at 5 p.m. at their store at 18 Whitfield Street in Guilford, Connecticut. Thank you, Breakwater! The Norwich Bookstore will
- [Health reporting that made a difference](https://chriswoodside.com/health-reporting-that-made-a-difference/) - Over the past several years, I wrote environmental health stories for the Connecticut Health Investigative Team. C-hit.org's founder and editor Lynne Delucia decided to stop publishing new material as 2022 came to a close. Delucia edited and inspired journalists at the Hartford Courant, New Haven Register, and c-hit over her distinguished career. She pulled some
- [Morning person? No. Night owl.](https://chriswoodside.com/morning-person-no-night-owl/) - This morning, I tried solving the daily Wordle puzzle before I got out of bed. It took me three times as long, and I almost didn't get it. I actually had predicted this might be true. I wake up slowly. My brain just seems less flexible until a few hours after I wake up. Is
- [New fiction in next year's Running Wild Press Anthology](https://chriswoodside.com/new-fiction-by-me-in-running-wild-press-anthology/) - My short story, "Pumping Station Road," about a trail runner whose ambition to run the entire width of Connecticut from east to west causes havoc with people he loves, will appear in the seventh Running Wild Press Anthology of Stories coming out in October 2023 from this California-based publisher. I am more than a little
- [Strangers Helping in a Most Respectful Way](https://chriswoodside.com/strangers-helping-in-a-most-respectful-way/) - Wild ponies in the Grayson Highlands, southern Virginia. One hot July afternoon earlier this summer, my husband Nat and I were huffing up the Marlborough Trail on Mount Monadnock in southwestern New Hampshire. I spotted four men above me, heading down. I pulled myself over a boulder and tugged a bandana up from my neck
- [Writing below a mountain](https://chriswoodside.com/writing-below-a-mountain/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] A birch and a pine grow next to each other below Mount Cardigan, Alexandria, New Hampshire. I just returned from leading a writing workshop for the Appalachian Mountain Club. The AMC and I
- [The Myth of American Conservatism](https://chriswoodside.com/the-myth-of-american-conservatism/) - Laura Ingalls Wilder was an American farmer and small-town farm journalist who rarely got involved in 20th-century politics. She was not an activist for the vote and only entered in politics in old age, when she ran for a paid local office — and lost. And yet for decades, conservative Americans have held up her
- [Beginning my visiting professor year at UConn](https://chriswoodside.com/beginning-my-visiting-professor-year-at-uconn/) - [et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]Teaching has risen to the top of my list. I am a visiting assistant professor in journalism at the University of Connecticut this year. I will be teaching environmental journalism, the history of journalism in America (“The Press in America”), and two newswriting labs for Professor Mike Stanton. I’m
- [Update, early spring 2022](https://chriswoodside.com/some-work-of-mine-lately/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}” collapsed=”off”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}” collapsed=”off”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”] Above: Annie Gribbins with some of her husband’s emergency rescue gear, which has inspired us to think of new coping strategies as the pandemic winds down. My sister Anne Woodside Gribbins
- [My Secret Ledge](https://chriswoodside.com/my-secret-ledge/) - [et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] 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
- [](https://chriswoodside.com/205051-2/) - Two weeks ago, as thin ice layers melted on the newly fallen leaves in New Hampshire's Crawford Notch, I said goodbye to a group of writers who'd spent the weekend with me for another Writing from the Mountains. These creatives were at varying stages of ideas and projects. They hiked on newly frozen paths, wrote
- [Symbols in a personal history](https://chriswoodside.com/symbols-in-a-personal-history/) - The forgotten Swiss Army knife is a character in my next book. I am writing a wilderness memoir. Appalachian Mountain Club Books will publish this book in a year. Writing personal history means I must do research on my own life. This story involves my two daughters, who were children, teenagers, and finally young adults
- [From endurance to hope](https://chriswoodside.com/from-endurance-to-hope/) - The last year and a half felt a little like an endurance race without the trail. Mentally I knew how to hold on and keep going, but physically, between the masks and atrial fibrillation—a common affliction of lifelong athletes (and a lot of other people) but which felt like my loneliest problem—I felt constrained. Not
- [Tuesday, April 20: How to start a freelance career, 5-6 p.m.](https://chriswoodside.com/tuesday-april-20-how-to-start-a-freelance-career-5-6-p-m/) - If you have thought of working as a freelance journalist and want to hear how my 21-year freelance career has gone, join me for a free online talk sponsored by the University of Connecticut Journalism Department, where I am a visiting assistant professor this year. Sign up here. How to find an editor who will
- [Pushcart Flop: The Cold Reality of My Short, Unsuccessful Stint as Vendor](https://chriswoodside.com/pushcart-flop-the-cold-reality-of-my-short-unsuccessful-stint-as-vendor/) - written for The Hartford Courant Each summer for one afternoon, a giant fife-and-drum parade comes to my quiet town. Thousands of people come to watch the bands. Selling ice cream at the Deep River Ancient Muster had always seemed like a sure way to make a bundle. It’s not. Successful entrepreneurs make pushcart vending look
- [Duffel Bags, the Metaphor for Pandemic Coping](https://chriswoodside.com/duffel-bags-the-metaphor-for-pandemic-coping/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] My sister Anne Woodside Gribbins and I wrote this article together. Annie (pointebypointe.wordpress.com) is a former ballet dancer and project manager for Tessitura Network. She lives in Titusville, New Jersey with her husband Joe and family. We
- [Foul Spills at Black Rock Harbor Will Go On for Decades](https://chriswoodside.com/cost-of-modernizing-century-old-infrastructure-means-foul-spills-at-black-rock-harbor-will-go-on-for-decades/) - On the west and east sides of narrow Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport, industry, school, recreation and sewage treatment converge. At the most inland tip are Santa Energy’s oil tanks. On the east side stretch asphalt runways at Pratt & Whitney’s test airport and a city landfill. On the west side stand O &
- [Citizen Scientists Steer Efforts to Jump-Start Black Rock Harbor's Recovery](https://chriswoodside.com/citizen-scientists-steer-efforts-to-jump-start-black-rock-harbors-recovery/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] This group devoted many early mornings in spring and summer as citizen scientists taking water samples to test the quality. Pictured are: Holly Turner, a teacher at the Bridgeport Regional Vocational Aquaculture School; Lyle Given, and Charlotte
- [Appalachia's Accidents report here. Click on link at the bottom.](https://chriswoodside.com/appalachias-accidents-report-here/) - Accidents Summer Fall 2020 Appalachia Journal
- [Dead Fish, Condoms, Brown Foam: Sewage Has Chokehold On Black Rock Harbor](https://chriswoodside.com/204890-2/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] On April 25, 2018, Patrick Clough walked onto a dock at Fayerweather Yacht Club on Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport. He looked down. Swirling around the dock was a brown, foamy slick. Women’s sanitary
- [Manage public outdoor spaces the way we manage grocery stores: like essential spaces that should never close](https://chriswoodside.com/manage-public-outdoor-spaces-the-way-we-manage-grocery-stores-like-essential-spaces-that-should-never-close/) - People need to get outside, breathe fresh air, move around, and fix their eyes on some actual distant shore. The coronavirus pandemic is rising toward its peak in the Northeast. Cities, towns, states, and the federal government are closing access to public parks across the United States. They are closing them because people were flocking
- [Mountains in a pandemic: a call for submissions](https://chriswoodside.com/mountains-in-a-pandemic-a-call-for-submissions/) - I am the editor of Appalachia journal, the country's oldest journal of mountaineering and conservation. We take a literary approach to wilderness and adventure. We are living through an unprecedented pandemic, something no one alive today has ever seen. This will go into the history books. Those who read and write for Appalachia journal find
- [Announcing a one-day Writing from Nature workshop on February 15](https://chriswoodside.com/announcing-a-one-day-writing-from-nature-workshop-on-february-15/) - [et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] Join me for my local, one-day version of a workshop I’ve given very successfully in New Hampshire. For the second year, Incarnation Center in Ivoryton has graciously given me space to run the workshop from 9-4 in their adorable, waterfront building known as the Tumble Inn. My workshops
- [Packing up our mother's things](https://chriswoodside.com/wading-into-personal-archives/) - My mother Gloria, 35-ish years ago, at around the time I sent the four-page typed letter. A few weeks ago my three brothers, sister, and I needed to pack up some objects and papers from our past. We didn't have much time, so our minds jolted into hyper-focus. Who would keep what? My grandfather's diaries
- [The clattering-of-feet landscape](https://chriswoodside.com/the-clattering-of-feet-landscape/) - Looking through 20-year-old photos this week, I glimpsed the full landscape of my personal life in a true, complete way. And realized that I have neglected that landscape as a writer, creating here and in my published articles this sense that I spend all my time sitting on rocks in the backcountry. These inspire a
- [Remembering a rescue effort](https://chriswoodside.com/remembering-a-rescue-effort/) - I came across this post from Philip Werner, aka Section Hiker. Eight years ago, I tried to save a man's life as part of a group of hikers who came upon a collapsed father on the Tuckerman Ravine Trail. He had been trying to climb Mount Washington with his two teenage daughters, one of whom
- [Sewage Overflows: Legal but Tainted](https://chriswoodside.com/sewage-overflows-legal-but-tainted/) - The Connecticut Health Investigative Team has posted Christine Woodside's three stories on routine sewage overflows into Long Island Sound off the coast of Connecticut. She had long wanted to understand why sewage overflows legally in some of Connecticut’s cities. She settled on the Bridgeport neighborhood of Black Rock, on Black Rock Harbor and near the
- [Long Island Sound to Lobsters: Is This Farewell?](https://chriswoodside.com/long-island-sound-to-lobsters-is-this-farewell/) - A lobster from southern New England is offered for sale at the Fulton Fish Market in New York City in 1943. Source: Library of Congress archives Twenty years ago, Long Island Sound was home to a thriving fishery of the American lobster. Hundreds of lobster boats brought in 3.7 million pounds worth more than $12
- [It isn't easy being green](https://chriswoodside.com/it-isnt-easy-being-green/) - Niamh Murtagh studies why people waste energy at home, even when they know they shouldn't. Since this story appeared in Nature Climate Change's inaugural issue of March 2011, Murtagh has changed her affiliation to University College London and continues to study ordinary people and energy use. Research psychologist Niamh Murtagh has spent the past few
- [Fear of rattlesnakes](https://chriswoodside.com/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 Winter/Spring 2019, published originally by the mountaineering and conservation journal of the Appalachian
- [Shoulder season](https://chriswoodside.com/shoulder-season/) - I waved away gnats, an instinct I haven't practiced since last October. I stepped over dried mud and looked at the sticks that would offer forth raspberries in a few months. Cataclysm has visited my life with the death of my mother last week from an unexpected, major stroke. For years I hoped that she
- [Seven-hour Writing from Nature workshop March 30](https://chriswoodside.com/seven-hour-writing-from-nature-workshop-march-30/) - Bushy Hill Lake knows more about the past than we might think. Once upon a time, it trickled as a stream at the bottom of this valley. Such changes offer a writer stories and symbols. (Pioneer Village end of the lake, mid-January 2019.) I am offering a seven-hour Writing from Nature workshop in my home
- [Raining in Arizona](https://chriswoodside.com/raining-in-arizona/) - Hello everybody. Yesterday I graduated from Arizona State University with my master's degree in history. The program gave me so much. View my final Capstone portfolio here. Here I sit in Phoenix, looking out on a steady rain falling on the cacti. Soon I return to my usually-rainy homeland of Connecticut. Wherever you are, let
- [Spring bursts out](https://chriswoodside.com/spring-bursts-out/) - We climbed two mountains in the Pliny Range of New Hampshire today. On the ridge, spring's arrival was creeping upward toward winter's exit. Low on the ridge, wildflowers reached away from the path. The red trillium is the most beautiful and amazing of them all. It grows out of a rhizome, and the leaves aren't
- [The archives of my mountain childhood](https://chriswoodside.com/the-archives-of-my-mountain-childhood/) - The week after my mother's memorial service, I found myself standing on the top of the first mountain I ever climbed, at 3, with her, my three brothers, and my father. Mom told me once that she had sort of pushed me up the short, steep path. I even remember how she asked me to
- [How Much Plastic is in Your Body? Scientists Turn to Oysters, Mussels for Clues](https://chriswoodside.com/how-much-plastic-is-in-your-body-scientists-turn-to-oysters-mussels-for-clues/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ next_background_color=”#000000″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.48″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.19.18″] Marine scientist J. Evan Ward checks on oysters he and his colleagues cultivate at the University of Connecticut. They examine them for the presence of microplastics. Photo by Christine Woodside J. Evan Ward knelt on a dock jutting into Eastern Point Bay at the eastern
- [The latest](https://chriswoodside.com/the-latest/) - I'm working on: -- a project for my master's degree from Arizona State University about farming in southern New Jersey in a place most people didn't know exists. -- a story about plastic pieces in food, water, and marine animals. -- an investigation into untreated sewage outflows on the coast of Connecticut. -- a
- [Wet, wet, wet](https://chriswoodside.com/wet/) - Saturday afternoon my husband and I walked by the town landing in Deep River, Connecticut. High tide had encountered more rain. Two rowboats normally overturned and chained to driftwood on a small beach now bobbed like lost flotsam. Sloshy waves lapped at a bench by the boat ramp. A wrack line of debris curved
- [Birds on the Flint River](https://chriswoodside.com/birds-on-the-flint-river/) - There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. ROBERT WILSON LYND, The Blue Lion and Other Essays Here in Flint, Michigan, where the public water supply's lead levels created a huge public-health crisis a few
- [SUN Award Day, yay for tutoring writers](https://chriswoodside.com/sun-award-day-yay-for-tutoring-writers/) - Tutoring. It's a part of my world right now as I finish my master's degree in history. I tutor graduate students at Arizona State University in writing. I enter an online world for 10 hours a week, helping social workers and nurse practitioners and criminal justice students and English students and etc. write more clearly.
- [Rock path](https://chriswoodside.com/rock-path/) - The path emerges. Rock by rock, I laid this path many years ago, using field stone, hunks of an old backyard fireplace, slate pieces rejected by a builder, and even broken pieces of concrete I found at the property line underneath vines. The path lacked a central organizing theme other than I like rock paths.
- [How not to make money: ice-cream vending tales](https://chriswoodside.com/how-not-to-make-money-ice-cream-vending-tales/) - Some years ago, my daughter, Annie, told us about a little boy selling brownies at the annual fife-and-drum parade in our town. His mother went into a store, leaving him in charge. Some girls came by and handed him 5 cents. He gave them their brownie and 25 cents in change. I laughed so hard
- [Mold concerns rise with the sea level](https://chriswoodside.com/mold-concerns-rise-with-the-sea-level/) - I wrote this for the Connecticut Health Investigative Team. See http://c-hit.org/2018/07/24/mold-concerns-rise-with-sea-level/
- [Gas wells meet wilderness](https://chriswoodside.com/gas-wells-meet-wilderness/) - [et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″] [et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] Forest floor in the old-growth patch called Heart’s Content. Photo by Chris Woodside In most forests in eastern North America, humans’ imprint has shaped the land beyond even what we can imagine. I have just returned from western Pennsylvania, where I visited the edges of the Allegheny
- [Encounter with a hare](https://chriswoodside.com/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 a nylon cord tied around my head. The light wagged back
- [Wilderness writing](https://chriswoodside.com/wilderness-writing/) - On Saturday I gathered around writer Laura Waterman's log-house table in Vermont with the good people of the Waterman Fund Essay Contest Committee. We reviewed a few dozen narrative pieces by new writers about wild places and their importance. We have a winner, and a runner-up! The winning piece will appear in the winter/spring issue
- [A misbehaving horse's lesson](https://chriswoodside.com/a-misbehaving-horses-lesson/) - Firm log bridge. Icy snow on top. Near Cardigan Mountain, New Hampshire. I took riding lessons for a few years, starting at age 49. At first I had no instincts. I lacked courage, and the horse knew it. I sometimes praised a misbehaving horse, hoping he would behave soon. He would turn the opposite direction
- [Mountain safety stories, two talks this summer](https://chriswoodside.com/mountain-safety-stories-two-talks-this-summer/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.4.1″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] Ellen Finnie, left, and Chris on the summit of Mount Washington. I will give my popular talk, “How Not to End Up in the Accidents report of Appalachia Journal” twice this summer. Join me for these free
- [Libertarians on the Prairie](https://chriswoodside.com/libertarians-on-the-prairie/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.106″ header_2_font_size=”24px” background_layout=”light”] Laura Ingalls Wilder, left, and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, as they looked in the 1930s, when they worked on the “Little House” books Now available from your favorite outlet. Coming out in paperback in October 2017 Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and
- [Possum, passim](https://chriswoodside.com/possum-passim/) - Opossum drawing by Gustav Mutzel (1839-1893). Behind our house a small ledgey hill adjoins a mysterious woods between my street's backyards and the main street of my town. One winter night I returned late from working and sat down with my snack by the back window. A small pointy-snouted animal emerged down the hill at
- [Writing From Nature, a wonderful first year](https://chriswoodside.com/writing-from-nature-a-wonderful-first-year/) - Inside of birch log decomposed Writing From Nature has ended after a beautiful weekend on Squam Lake. Our group found new routes on and under Rattlesnake Mountain, wandered through fields and the forest, sat on the water, collected pine cones, wood, fern and other plants, photos of plants growing out of old logs, spiders resting,
- [The link between walking and creativity](https://chriswoodside.com/the-link-between-walking-and-creativity/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.2″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] Look. Some years ago, Chris felt a calling to reach a class about walking and writing. The Green Street Arts Center in Middletown, Connecticut agreed to let her try it. She called the class Writing in Motion.
- [Nature and the Ghosts of Thinkers](https://chriswoodside.com/nature-and-the-ghosts-of-thinkers/) - Stone Pond and Mount Monadnock, old postcard photograph. In May 2016, I spent a weekend at Stone Pond cleaning and preparing my inlaws' family cottage for Writing from Nature, my second annual workshop. I heard a new story from a neighbor. It's about the giant red mansion next to the house where we'll be. The
- [Testimonials on Writing from Nature workshop](https://chriswoodside.com/testimonials-on-writing-from-nature-workshop/) - Writers read from new work on Sunday of the workshop. Here are a few elements writers liked about the second annual Writing From Nature workshop: "Tailoring to different genres and skill levels." "The venue was quiet and undisturbed." "Positive, encouraging vibe." "Amazing and inspiring atmosphere." "Wonderful meals and great people." "Keynote talk Saturday evening, sharing
- [Fog, night, fear, and writing ideas](https://chriswoodside.com/fog-night-fear-and-writing-ideas/) - Fog rolls across Franconia Notch, White Mountains, NH. I took this on a solo backpacking trip. Have you ever thought that being scared and uncomfortable in nature might jolt you toward new ideas? People sometimes ask me why I go into the mountains by myself. I do it so that I will bang into the
- [Why I started a writing workshop, and what happened when I did](https://chriswoodside.com/why-i-started-a-writing-workshop-and-what-happened-when-i-did/) - Stone Pond looking toward Mount Monadnock, the site of the 2016 workshop. I have been a writer for 35 years. Much of what I've achieved so far, I've figured out by myself. But some of what I figured out, I would have loved if someone had told me early. Mainly: Trust yourself. Also: Those doubters are not
- [Four Quartets and Eight Legs](https://chriswoodside.com/four-quartets-and-eight-legs/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial” _builder_version=”3.2.1″] The Eight-Legged Thing outside the Caratunk, Maine Post Office. From left: Chris Woodside, Cay Lodine, Phil Lodine, Nat Eddy Appalachia journal, Summer/Fall 2014 Rituals fortify an Appalachian Trail trek The thin paperback’s cover bent back. My friend Phil held it up above his
- [New Wilderness Voices](https://chriswoodside.com/new-wilderness-voices/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.106″ header_2_font_size=”24px”] Collected Essays from the Waterman Fund Contest Christine Woodside, editor; Amy Seidl, foreword A literary celebration of the Northeast’s wild places Guy and Laura Waterman spent a lifetime reflecting on and writing about the mountains of the Northeast. The Waterman Fund seeks to further their
- [Ideas come from trees](https://chriswoodside.com/ideas-come-from-trees/) - Spruces on Cannon Mountain. Photo by Marcus Quigmire/Wikimedia commons I started walking in the woods as a way to write more honestly about 15 years ago, after my father died. I already knew at that point that getting onto a forest path, alone, helped me sort out what I think. But I was still in the mode
- [Step forward onto the land: starting new writing](https://chriswoodside.com/step-forward-onto-the-land-starting-new-writing/) - Wind-formed trees hang onto a steep beach on outermost Cape Cod. Photo taken in January 2009. Wendell Berry knows Kentucky, where he has lived, written, and done some farming for most of his more than eight decades on earth. When one knows a place deeply, one writes about it well. In 2015 while being inducted into the
- [Do we change, how much do we change, and does it show in our writing?](https://chriswoodside.com/do-we-change-how-much-do-we-change-and-does-it-show-in-our-writing/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row custom_padding=”0px|0px|0|0px|false|false” admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] Goldenrod It is so easy to think of a writing project I’ve kept at my side for years as if it exists in perfection, a static beauty I just must uncover. In reality, an unwritten essay
- [Libertarians on the Prairie Coming Soon](https://chriswoodside.com/libertarians-on-the-prairie-coming-soon/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_padding=”0px|2px|0px|0px|false|false”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] The cover shows Laura Ingalls Wilder, left, and Rose Wilder Lane, as they looked when they were writing the books. “Libertarians on the Prairie is a fascinating expose of the ideological underpinnings of one of America’s
- [A quick lesson from a musk ox](https://chriswoodside.com/a-quick-lesson-from-a-musk-ox/) - At times like this, I silently thank the taxidermists. This is a life-size diorama of musk oxen at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. The musk ox embodies certain truths about the life of a writer. A musk ox lives in a harsh environment and survives with a shaggy coat and rounded feet that
- [Living on an Acre](https://chriswoodside.com/living-on-an-acre/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”3_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] Chris at the Big E Connecticut writers’ table with ‘Living on an Acre’ Go Forward by Going Back in Time Homesteading fever gripped many Americans in the 1970s. The movement got its fuel from energy shortages, the
- [Soul of the Sky](https://chriswoodside.com/soul-of-the-sky/) - Exploring the human side of weather Soul of the Sky is a different kind of weather book. It’s not preoccupied with charting fronts, defining what an isobar is, or trying to get you to memorize the conversion formula from degrees Centigrade to degrees Fahrenheit. Instead, it's a collection that illustrates how the weather can inspire and
- [Energy Independence](https://chriswoodside.com/energy-independence/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.106″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” padding_2_last_edited=”on|phone” padding_top_2=”300px” padding_2_tablet=”0px|||”][et_pb_column type=”3_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.106″] Cover of the 2009 edition From the Introduction Why You Need this Book A kind of citizen energy consciousness has rooted itself in America. We now know too much to make fun of alternative energy as something for latter-day hippies
- [No Limits But the Sky](https://chriswoodside.com/no-limits-but-the-sky/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.106″ header_2_font_size=”24px”] Cover The Best Mountaineering Stories from Appalachia Journal 2014, Appalachian Mountain Club Books This anthology collects the most riveting, real-life adventure stories from America’s oldest mountaineering and conservation journal, Appalachia. Each of these essays, published from 1877 to the present, chronicles a tale
- [How "Little House on the Prairie" Built Modern Conservatism](https://chriswoodside.com/how-little-house-on-the-prairie-built-modern-conservatism/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.106″ background_layout=”light”] Laura Ingalls Wilder, right, with her sisters Mary (seated) and Carrie circa 1881. Courtesy of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home Association Politico Magazine, September 11, 2016 For 84 years, American kids have been growing up with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s inspiring Little House books, reading brave tales of survival on the
- [Towels, Sunblock, and, Oh Yeah, Checkbook](https://chriswoodside.com/towels-sunblock-and-oh-yeah-checkbook/) - written for The New York Times AS soon as beach season started, I set out on an odyssey to test the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that municipal beaches must be open to the public, not just to residents. In the family van, my two daughters and I sought out beaches from Greenwich to Madison. Our
- [Bring Back Recess](https://chriswoodside.com/bring-back-recess/) - written for The Washington Post On October 25, 2002, schoolchildren in the Washington area emerged gleefully from locked classrooms and ran out to the playground. “Recess is back,” proclaimed The Washington Post. But had the snipers who shut down ordinary life for weeks chosen to attack in Chicago, or Atlanta, or parts of Texas and
- [Return to Levittown](https://chriswoodside.com/return-to-levittown/) - 25 Winding Lane, Levittown, New York, in August 1958. An architectural photography company took this photo for House Beautiful magazine. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Gottscho-Schleisner Collection written for Blue Ridge Press In the 1960s my three brothers, sister, parents, and I used to visit my Uncle Woody, who lived in Levittown, Pennsylvania, one of the most
- [Bracelet Bears Legacy of Hope and Grief](https://chriswoodside.com/bracelet-bears-legacy-of-hope-and-grief/) - written for The Day After the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, I went looking for my old prisoner-of-war bracelet. It was tucked in a folder of childhood papers. The stainless steel band with "Capt. Richard G. Morin, 12-20-68" looks exactly as it did in the early 1970s. The layer of nail polish still
- [Mom and the Girls, Taking the Upward Trail](https://chriswoodside.com/mom-and-the-girls-taking-the-upward-trail/) - Elizabeth and Annie's feet, April 23, 1997 written for The New York Times YEARS ago, I decided to take my two young daughters backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. If it went well, I thought, we would go again the next year. We would hike girls-only, without their father. He and I had hiked from Georgia
- [Does a Bit of Africa Sit in Deep River?](https://chriswoodside.com/does-a-bit-of-africa-sit-in-deep-river/) - written for The New York Times WHEN it comes to geographical lessons, Connecticut has two that it doesn't share with just anybody. Tourists often visit Dinosaur State Park, a spot where fossilized dinosaur footprints are surrounded by an arena. And they know about the quiet, undulating ocean coast near Mystic, where the landscape resembles Maine.
- [Different Views on the Use of Waterfront Land](https://chriswoodside.com/different-views-on-the-use-of-waterfront-land/) - Cottage No. 31 goes down, Long Beach West, Stratford, Connecticut, Oct. 22, 2010 The Connecticut Mirror It’s not often that civilization is demolished to make way for wild birds, especially within sight of Connecticut’s largest city. That’s what’s happening on a long barrier beach between Bridgeport and Stratford. On the Stratford side, a yellow excavator
- [Japanese article quotes Chris Woodside. Subject: the Little House books](https://chriswoodside.com/japanese-article-quotes-chris-woodside-subject-the-little-house-books/) - The newspaper Asahi Shimbun's locator map showing De Smet, South Dakota, Laura Ingalls Wilder's home as a young woman and where an Asahi Shimbun reporter attended a Little House pageant. 7-Oct-14 This is an unofficial translation of an article by Daisuke Nakai, which originally appeared in Asahi Shimbun, a daily newspaper in Japan. Nakai is
- [Little Libertarians on the Prairie](https://chriswoodside.com/little-libertarians-on-the-prairie-2/) - Illustration by Boris Kulikov for the Boston Globe The Boston Globe, August 11, 2013 A few months after the stock market crash, in the winter of 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder sat at a small desk in Mansfield, Mo., and began writing down her life story in pencil. She had rattled in wagons from cabin to
- [Was It a Mountain Lion? A Guide](https://chriswoodside.com/was-it-a-mountain-lion-a-guide/) - The mountain lion in Minnesota last winter, months before he made it to Connecticut. Patch.com, July 9, 2011 Despite many sightings over the years, it's doubtful Connecticut has mountain lions For 25 years, Connecticut residents have reported seeing mountain lions. Out of hundreds of sightings, only one time could they prove it actually was one.
- [Doctors and Computers](https://chriswoodside.com/doctors-and-computers/) - Dr. Kristen Zarfos with a patient. ctmirror.org, December 5, 2014 Not the best examining-room combo By Christine Woodside and Dr. Kristen Zarfos Researchers conducting dozens of studies in recent years have asked patients how they feel when their doctors stare at personal digital assistants or laptop computers instead of at them. Several of their
- [A River Reborn](https://chriswoodside.com/a-river-reborn/) - My landscape: Connecticut River in Deep River written for River and Shore It’s early June on the Connecticut River and the sun is blazing just above the tree fringe of Selden Island on the far bank. The glitter on the water is so bright I have to write with one eye closed. Out in the
- [The Trail Pioneers](https://chriswoodside.com/the-trail-pioneers/) - The Blue-Blazed Hiking Trails as shown in the Connecticut Walk Book, 1940. CONNECTICUT FOREST & PARK ASSOCIATION written for Connecticut Woodlands In December 1929, a handful of professional men who loved hiking began building the Blue-Blazed Hiking Trails in Connecticut In December 1929, six men sat down at the Graduate Club in New Haven to
- [What Did You Say?](https://chriswoodside.com/what-did-you-say/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.0.106″][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.106″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_layout=”light”]written for Woman’s Day It took me years to admit I had a hearing problem. Don’t make the same mistake. I BEGAN using hearing aids in both ears two years ago, just before my 44th birthday and 15 years after a doctor first recommended I get
- [Alone with Wolves](https://chriswoodside.com/alone-with-wolves/) - From a distance, a camera crew captured Gudrun Pflueger's encounter with coast wolves. MATTHEY FILMS written for Appalachia journal Gudrun Pflueger believes that a buried instinct to handle predators saved her in a wilderness meadow Gudrun Pflueger sat alone in a meadow near the coast of the British Columbia rainforest, her knees bent in front,
- [Daylight Acceleration Time](https://chriswoodside.com/daylight-acceleration-time-2/) - Appalachia journal In the mountains, daylight saving time diminishes into the economic gimmick it truly is WHILE HIKING THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL SEVERAL YEARS AGO, I settled into an odd sleeping pattern. I would fall into the sleeping bag soon after sunset after my dishwashing duty had ended. Then, many nights, I would wake up at
- [Wanted: Austral Summer Workers](https://chriswoodside.com/wanted-austral-summer-workers/) - A giant petrel watches Ryan Wallace weigh its baby as Wallace assists research scientists on an island off Palmer Station, Antarctica. JEFF OTTEN, NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION Appalachia journal Longtime employees of the company that supports the National Science Foundation describe the unique addiction to Antarctica that takes hold Come work on the coldest, highest, and
- [Earth, but not as we know it](https://chriswoodside.com/earth-but-not-as-we-know-it/) - McKibben with the 350 logo T-shirt, at home in Ripton, Vermont Nature Reports Climate Change In his new book, environmentalist Bill McKibben says we must abandon the notion that economic growth and environmental sustainability are compatible — only then can we prevent a climate catastrophe. In 1989, American environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote a book about
- [Everyone Who Starts Will Finish](https://chriswoodside.com/everyone-who-starts-will-finish/) - Warren Doyle at the Connecticut Forest & Park Association Appalachia journal Warren Doyle's rules for long-distance group hikes Warren Doyle, age 60, has a crush on Little Debbie, the snack cake girl. His favorite thing to do is to eat a Little Debbie cosmic brownie as he sets out on a cold morning to walk
- [Deepwater Oil Drilling: Not That New](https://chriswoodside.com/deepwater-oil-drilling-not-that-new/) - Cutler Cleveland, editor of the Encyclopedia of Energy, knows the history of deepwater drilling The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media Until BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion in April and continuing oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, many in the news media covered deepwater oil exploration with a sort of awe. The
- [The Long Way Home: Where Exit Ramps Are Nameless](https://chriswoodside.com/the-long-way-home-where-exit-ramps-are-nameless/) - Appalachia Journal I have learned not to get lost on foot in the woods, but I have never mastered route finding in a car. Road maps never print enough detail; when reality presents unexpected streets and signs, I can’t reconcile them with my broad-brush concept of the route. Sundown strains my sense of direction. The
- [Return to Blue Mountain](https://chriswoodside.com/return-to-blue-mountain/) - Cover page shows the denuded landscape of Blue Mountain near Palmerton, Pennsylvania Written for Appalachian Trailway News Fourteen years ago, in 1987, when I followed the northbound Appalachian Trail up the cliff over the Lehigh River near Palmerton, Pennsylvania, the view reminded me at first of the Trail above treeline in the White Mountains—a blue
- [A libertarian thinker in Connecticut](https://chriswoodside.com/a-libertarian-thinker-in-connecticut/) - Rose Wilder Lane testifying in 1939 before Congress. She favored the Ludlow Amendment, which would have taken declaring war to a vote of the people. (Library of Congress photo) Connecticut Explored, Fall 2010 Over the past several years, my pursuit of information about the “real” Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House series of
- [Fears for America's Parched Southwest](https://chriswoodside.com/fears-for-americas-parched-southwest/) - Nature Climate Change Volume 1 Issue 8 Nature Climate Change, November 2011 The amazing giant saguaro cactus of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States does what its human neighbours cannot. It survives on 8 to 15 inches of annual rainfall. The Saguaro sucks up these rare drenchings through extra-long shallow roots, holding the
- [Emergency Preparedness, a 9/11 Remembrance](https://chriswoodside.com/emergency-preparedness-a-9-11-remembrance/) - Appalachia journal, Winter/Spring 2012 From the time Elizabeth and Annie were little, my husband Nat and I took them into the mountains, from Tennessee to New Hampshire. They trudged miles carrying loads. We taught them how to light a stove, collect water, wait out thunderstorms, and walk through wet and cold. The best part, I
- [Who Led the First Ascent of Denali?](https://chriswoodside.com/who-led-the-first-ascent-of-denali/) - This portrait of Stuck appeared at the beginning of his book 10,000 Miles with a Dog Sled. Appalachia journal, Summer/Fall 2012 Hudson Stuck, Archdeacon of the Yukon For many years, no one knew who he was because of the controversies surrounding the ascent of the highest peak in North America. The missionary who organized and
- [Father of the Everglades](https://chriswoodside.com/father-of-the-everglades/) - Library of Congress. Ernest Coe sat, walked, and even slept in the Everglades during the years he crusaded for it to become a national park Connecticut Woodlands Fall 2012 How did Ernest F. Coe evolve from a New Haven landscaper who cultivated exotic plants for Connecticut’s front yards into the man who fought to preserve
- [The Long Way Home: Really Going Over the Mountain](https://chriswoodside.com/the-long-way-home-really-going-over-the-mountain/) - Appalachia Journal, Winter/Spring 2013 Going up there and being blown on is nothing. We never do much climbing while we are there, but we eat our luncheon, etc., very much as at home. It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, if ever. —Henry David Thoreau, in a letter to
- [The Disappeared Sandplains: 95 percent of them are gone](https://chriswoodside.com/the-disappeared-sandplains-95-percent-of-them-are-gone/) - Sandplain in central Connecticut. Disturbed sand is from an all-terrain vehicle. Connecticut Woodlands, spring 2016 I trudge along a barren, sandy field, following a bespectacled, gray-bearded ecologist named Bill Moorhead. He steps carefully in his work boots over dead patches of grass and green-grey lichen. He leans down suddenly, plucks a dead plant out of
- [Trail of Memories](https://chriswoodside.com/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 because this is an old hill it feels smooth, with only one fast jog
- [Buildings Scattered in the Green Spaces](https://chriswoodside.com/buildings-scattered-in-the-green-spaces/) - “As one follows the main highways or railroads between Boston and Washington, D.C., one hardly loses sight of built-up areas, tightly woven residential communities, or powerful concentrations of manufacturing plants. Flying this same route one discovers, on the other hand, that behind the ribbons of densely occupied land along the principal arteries of traffic, and
- [The Neglect of Obituaries](https://chriswoodside.com/the-neglect-of-obituaries/) - As Americans become more accustomed to pictures of dead bodies in the media, we are told less and less of the details of ordinary citizens' deaths. Only major newspapers, like The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, and the Los Angeles Times, still pay writers to report obituaries. In smaller cities and most small towns,
- [Against Keeping Chickens](https://chriswoodside.com/against-keeping-chickens/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] On my chest of drawers sits a stuffed chick. My daughter gave it to me to fulfill my desire to keep chickens, because my family has urged me not to take this on. The realities of raising
- [People Using Less Oil](https://chriswoodside.com/people-using-less-oil/) - Biodiesel made from soybeans mixes with regular diesel to power these USDA trucks in Maryland. The New York Times's Jad Mouawad has reported that despite fears that the United States would need more oil refineries, people are using so much less oil now than they were only two years ago that refineries have shut down
- [Dogs](https://chriswoodside.com/dogs/) - Downward facing pet I have a dog, the first dog I have ever owned. I didn't grow up with dogs and I never yearned for one until a year or so ago when I started wishing for a hiking companion. Mine is a poodle, probably a decade old, who was found wandering the streets of
- [The price of electricity from solar power](https://chriswoodside.com/the-price-of-electricity-from-solar-power/) - The price of solar photovoltaic energy in the United States has come down in the past 10 years, but it's still way too expensive for most people—about 30 cents per kilowatt hour. Electricity on average in the U.S. is about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (residential is about 12 cents, on average). In China, where a boom in
- [Kleen Energy, 2 Days Later](https://chriswoodside.com/kleen-energy-2-days-later/) - Damaged power plant as viewed from just off the Mattabesett Trail I maintain a hiking trail in Middletown, Connecticut, that skirts the future natural gas/oil power plant where an explosion killed five people on February 7. The blast blew out parts of the plant's main building during a "blow-down" to clean out the natural gas
- [Majority of 1,001 surveyed say they want to conserve energy but don't](https://chriswoodside.com/majority-of-1001-surveyed-say-they-want-to-conserve-energy-but-dont/) - Yale and George Mason universities surveyed 1,001 Americans over the holidays at the end of 2009 and concluded that, when it comes to conserving resources, there is a gap between what they want to do and what they actually do. For instance, 88 percent said it is important to recycle. That is, to place bottles,
- [Money, Money, Money](https://chriswoodside.com/money-money-money/) - For a quick narrative tutorial on why solar photovoltaic energy hasn't taken hold worldwide, see Elisabeth Rosenthal's article in today's New York Times on the boom, and now downturn, of the solar market in Spain. It costs money. People want to make money. Governments don't want to spend money indefinitely. We compare it to other energy sources.
- [Increase our climate change IQ](https://chriswoodside.com/increase-our-climate-change-iq/) - Let's all make a promise that we won't find ourselves debating climate change without becoming better informed. I am so tired of people I like and love making blanket statements and pointing to an opinion article as their source. We can do better! One of my editors has recommended an excellent article by The Economist.
- [Occupational necessity](https://chriswoodside.com/occupational-necessity/) - After running the 10K Bimbler's Bash. Scott Livingston took the photo. Editing two trail/environmental magazines requires that I go into the mountains, a lot. Which I love to do. But this year I had ear surgery (a success—better hearing) and I spent the first three months of 2010 resting a lot and walking the dog.
- [Heading back to the prairie](https://chriswoodside.com/heading-back-to-the-prairie/) - Near the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa, lies this restored prairie. I am bound for this landscape again in July. It is here at the Hoover Library where many of the papers of Laura Ingalls Wilder, frontier author, lie. I am trying to find the real Laura Ingalls Wilder, pioneer. What kind
- [Selling the new book at Chester Market, June 27](https://chriswoodside.com/selling-the-new-book-at-chester-market-june-27/) - The cover: thinking about homesteading, no matter how small the plot My newest book is the newly updated Living on an Acre. I was still a teenager when the USDA put together the original edition, then called Living on a Few Acres. Lyons Press (of Globe Pequot Press) has just published the second edition of the 21st-century version of
- [Laura Ingalls Wilder's Dandelion Wine](https://chriswoodside.com/laura-ingalls-wilders-dandelion-wine/) - Inserted in an old Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook from the 1930s, in the papers of the once teetotalling Laura Ingalls Wilder: Pour four quarts boiling water upon six quarts of [dandelion] blossoms. Let stand three days, stirring often. Strain. To liquid add four pounds of granulated sugar and bring to boil. When cold, add
- [Sign at restored prairie, Coralville Lake, Iowa](https://chriswoodside.com/sign-at-restored-prairie-coralville-lake-iowa/) - Check out item number 4 The Coralville Reservoir is an Army Corps of Engineers lake north of Iowa City, Iowa, where I'm spending the week. This sign appears at a patch of restored prairie just below the dam. It explains the characteristics of prairies and reminds us that most of Iowa used to be prairies.
- [Flooded swimming area](https://chriswoodside.com/flooded-swimming-area/) - Spring floods extend into deep summer at the large Army Corps of Engineers reservoir called Coralville Lake just north of Iowa City. See the top of the gazebo, left hand side of this scene? Trails have water over low areas, too.
- [What ignites the outdoor passion of the next generation?](https://chriswoodside.com/what-ignites-the-outdoor-passion-of-the-next-generation/) - In the new issue of Appalachia journal, published a few weeks ago— Articles on children, adults, and motivation in the outdoors: This Counts as a School Day: Why are some kids free to explore the wild, and others aren't? By Catherine Buni. Suckled by the Wolf: A mother ponders the nature of wildness. By Kristen
- [A set of expectations punishing to women](https://chriswoodside.com/a-set-of-expectations-punishing-to-women/) - Writing again. New York Times writer David Leonhardt brought out the old whiny sigh on August 3 about how hard it is for women to get ahead in America. He opens with a terrible microcosm of the labor market or society: the Supreme Court. Golly gee, the last three women nominated to the high court were all
- [The mountain I said I would never climb](https://chriswoodside.com/the-mountain-i-said-i-would-never-climb/) - Owl's Head, at right, from the top of Mount Garfield This mountain, the lopsided, bulbous ridge on the right, is much lower than the one on which I stood to take this picture, but it intimidates me more.It's known as Owl's Head, after a portion of its long ridge. Except for the smallish procession of
- [Legs begin to move, thoughts begin to flow](https://chriswoodside.com/legs-begin-to-move-thoughts-begin-to-flow/) - Mount Isolation Trail, September 13, 2010 I am back from a trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I climbed Owl's Head, the subject of a previous "Get This," and five other mountains. I climbed to the ridge where Mount Monroe waited behind freezing rain, a few snowflakes, high winds, and fog. My friends
- [A mountain next to your town](https://chriswoodside.com/a-mountain-next-to-your-town/) - Sentinel Mountain looking over Missoula, Montana Missoula, Montana is a town tucked in the center of a ring of mountains. Sentinel Mountain watches over the University of Montana campus. Waving grasses bump up to long switchbacks in a trail that begins from a city road. Imagine, anyone who lives at sea level, as I do,
- [Free water](https://chriswoodside.com/free-water/) - Drinking fountain and sign at the University of Montana The United States still seems big when I travel thousands of miles from Connecticut. Here in this photograph a sensibility I don't see in Connecticut greets everyone headed to the rest rooms of the University of Montana's student center. The Society of Environmental Journalists held most
- [The last sunset, sort of](https://chriswoodside.com/the-last-sunset-sort-of/) - Sky in Deep River, Connecticut, 5:41 p.m., November 6, 2010 Here is the last sunset of the summer, so to speak. The day after I saw this view out of my kitchen window, I would expect total darkness at the same hour. The latest incarnation of the law governing Daylight Saving Time takes us a
- [Junk from the past, all part of trail work](https://chriswoodside.com/junk-from-the-past-all-part-of-trail-work/) - Tires, auger, car door, and other junk hauled out of the woods About seven years ago, after covering thousands of miles of woods trails over many years of hiking, my husband Nat and I signed up to be trail maintainers for part of the Mattabesett Trail in Middletown, Connecticut. The project we're in the midst
- [Thoughts on consumption](https://chriswoodside.com/thoughts-on-consumption/) - "Adopting a land ethic is easy and painless for most of us today because it imposes the primary burden to act on someone else." —Douglas W. MacCleery, United States Forestry Service forester, writing about a decade ago. And more: "While few of us are resource producers any more, we all remain resource consumers. This is
- [Thoughts on consumption, part 2](https://chriswoodside.com/thoughts-on-consumption-part-2/) - Harper's Weekly, December 25, 1880. People making wreaths. I am not a grinch—really. But I can't help but think of Thorstein Veblen, the man who gave us the term "conspicuous consumption," at this time of year. "Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure. As wealth accumulates on
- [1920 or 2010?](https://chriswoodside.com/1920-or-2010/) - The New York Times on Sunday featured an article about a 19-year-old about to take part in a debutante ball. The point of the item was that here was a debutante who is smart. Suggesting that she's unusual and that, therefore, other debutantes are not high achievers. The young woman told the reporter that society
- [NYC's underground, as inspiring as Everest](https://chriswoodside.com/nycs-underground-as-inspiring-as-everest/) - Lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn, subways Erling Kagge, a Norwegian climber, has started exploring the sewers and subway tunnels of New York City. "The opportunity to see New York in a way no one else has, from the inside out, is, for me, as inspiring as walking to the poles and climbing Everest," he
- [Wikipedia, the People's Misinformation](https://chriswoodside.com/wikipedia-the-peoples-misinformation/) - A few weeks ago I took a look at a Wikipedia entry on some hiking trails I know well. Tonight I read Wikipedia's article on Laura Ingalls Wilder, about whom I know much more than the average fan, having researched her papers for many years. Wow, I'm appalled. Wikipedia is publishing's version of genetically modified
- [Obama says end oil subsidies](https://chriswoodside.com/obama-says-end-oil-subsidies/) - From Obama's State of the Union address: "With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. "We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate
- [Think Norwegian](https://chriswoodside.com/think-norwegian/) - Women wash and hang clothes (see the rack at the left) in Boston, c. 1905. Library of Congress Even in the winter, Norwegians don't whine for electric dryers to finish their laundry. Norwegians think Americans are foolish because we think we have to use clothes dryers especially in the winter. Norwegians, whose climate is colder
- [Social scientists with the hot potato of climate change](https://chriswoodside.com/social-scientists-with-the-hot-potato-of-climate-change/) - Last Friday, March 4, I stopped in at the Garrison Institute in Garrison, New York for the last day of a conference for social scientists who study how people are dealing with climate change—their understanding or lack of it, their willingness to discuss the future or lack of it, and how meditation fits into this.
- [Extreme weather](https://chriswoodside.com/extreme-weather/) - Some of the weather reported on March 23: 1765: 2-plus feet of snow hits Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. 1912: 37 inches of snow in Olathe, Kansas. 1913: Tornado destroys a five-mile-long swath in Omaha, killing 94. 1917: Tornado kills 45 in New Albany, Indiana. 1987: 21 inches of snow in Pampa, Texas.
- [She browsed the newsstand and found...](https://chriswoodside.com/she-browsed-the-newsstand-and-found/) - Owl's Head fire in 1907, pre-Weeks Act; photo courtesy of the Forest History Society appeared on Appalachia's cover Shambling around the web, I stumbled upon a blog by a Colorado woman who on a trip east found Appalachia journal, which I edit, on the newsstand at a Barnes & Noble in Bethesda, Maryland. "I skimmed
- [Connecticut gobbling power at home](https://chriswoodside.com/connecticut-gobbling-power-at-home/) - My home state's Council on Environmental Quality's annual report tracked a discouraging trend in power use, per capita, on the homefront -- it's going up. Here's a quotation from the report: "Residents reversed course in 2010 and used more electricity at home. During the previous three years, the average Connecticut resident had been using less.
- [Dropping everything to visit your daughter](https://chriswoodside.com/dropping-everything-to-visit-your-daughter/) - Williamstown, nestled in the Berkshires. Yesterday I cancelled everything and drove up to Williamstown, Massachusetts, to see my 20-year-old daughter, Annie, who has been weathering a very busy semester at Williams College. We both felt the need to just breathe the same air for a day. Her grandmother, my mother-in-law, died just before Easter and
- [Our neighborhood inspiration, Joan Brainard](https://chriswoodside.com/our-neighborhood-inspiration-joan-brainard/) - Deep River (Connecticut) Town Hall Around the corner from my house live the Brainards. Joan Brainard hung her laundry on two long clotheslines every Monday and Thursday for almost 47 years. In 2007 I went to visit her and her husband, David, in their kitchen for an article I was writing for The New York
- [Think Globally, Rain Locally](https://chriswoodside.com/think-globally-rain-locally/) - Here is a good article by Adam Voiland for the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. It explains why it's irresponsible to get lazy when talking at parties about climate change, whether you are disputing climate change's existence or worried that last summer's heat waves in the Northeastern United States marked a more dramatic
- [Where that balloon ends up](https://chriswoodside.com/where-that-balloon-ends-up/) - Judy Benson holds someone's former balloon Slight fog at the mouth of the Connecticut River. The first kayak adventure of the season with my environment reporter friend Judy Benson. After the parties end and the mylar balloons lose their air and float down gently to Earth, they tend to end up in the waterways. Here,
- [Appalachian Trail reunions](https://chriswoodside.com/appalachian-trail-reunions/) - Cay Query Lodine, Phil Lodine, my husband Nat Eddy, and me, halfway through our AT thru-hike, at ATC headquarters, Harpers Ferry, WV, June 22, 1987 This year marks 24 years since the summer we—Cay, Phil, Nat, and I—hiked the Appalachian Trail. Over the weekend (June 10-12, 2011), my husband Nat and I crashed a 30-year
- [Big skies of Iowa](https://chriswoodside.com/big-skies-of-iowa/) - Restored prairie and mown path on the grounds of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa I am back in Iowa this week, researching once again the papers of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. A travel grant from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Association made this possible. Laura and Rose together worked on
- [Crashing an author's dinner](https://chriswoodside.com/crashing-an-authors-dinner/) - Kurt Michael Friese, author of "Chasing Chiles," with his daughter and son at his restaurant, Devotay. I went down to Prairie Lights Bookstore tonight to hear local-food chef and restaurant owner Kurt Michael Friese read from his book about chile peppers and climate change. For a year Friese and co-authors Kraig Kraft and Gary Paul
- [Four Miles Not Beers](https://chriswoodside.com/four-miles-not-beers/) - Runners drink beer after the Chester Four on the Fourth race The Chester Rotary Club's annual Four on the Fourth road race pushes hundreds of athletes, neighbors, and visitors to run some of the steeper hills found in the lower Connecticut River Valley. This friendly town is the home of my freelance writing office for
- [Couch potatoes blame potatoes](https://chriswoodside.com/couch-potatoes-blame-potatoes/) - Potato harvest by lisibo on flickr A new study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine linked potatoes to longterm weight gain. But it also said other things. The journalists' reports of the study focus on the potatoes. It is true that the study team certified a slightly stronger link between potatoes
- [Wilds of My Home State](https://chriswoodside.com/wilds-of-my-home-state/) - The new issue of Appalachia journal visits New Jersey's lowlands, where I grew up from age 4 to 18, and where my father's ancesters go back to pre-Revolutionary War. I am the editor-in-chief of Appalachia. Trail experts Ron Dupont and Paul DeCoste yell at us to wake up and face the fact that New Jersey saved more
- [Buy food from farmers](https://chriswoodside.com/buy-food-from-farmers/) - David Brown painting in a painting of his farm... I think.... From hayhouseonline.blogspot.com Supermarkets sell fruit and vegetables mostly from far-off lands. It's summer now in North America. Farmers near your house sell produce that, a few hours before, trembled on the vines. When I was a child, my mother and I drove out to
- [Straight up trails in NH and CT](https://chriswoodside.com/straight-up-trails-in-nh-and-ct/) - My daughter Annie (left) with me on Eagle Cliff. This has been a whirlwind week, tacked on to a month of endless work and family events. The latest is: Our daughter, Elizabeth, who graduated from college in May, got a job as a research assistant at Yale-New Haven Hospital. This made me think of my
- [Citizen heroes in Berlin, NH](https://chriswoodside.com/citizen-heroes-in-berlin-nh/) - Berlin perches on the Androscoggin River, where paper mills once operated. Here in the mills, scientists also invented Crisco and saran wrap. Photo from city-data.com Until two nights ago I knew very little about Berlin, New Hampshire. I knew that paper mills built the city and that the demise of the paper industry in the
- [My talk on straight-up trails](https://chriswoodside.com/my-talk-on-straight-up-trails/) - Poster from the Loon Preservation Committee for my talk at their Moultonborough, NH Loon Center. This was a very nice night. I plan to give this talk other places too.
- [Makeup doesn't matter](https://chriswoodside.com/makeup-doesnt-matter/) - Eleanor Roosevelt in 1933. Library of Congress I think that many women spend too much time and money on makeup and clothes. I think many of them would look better without the fuss. I acknowledge my view isn't typical, but consider the public discussion going on now. Today's New York Times discusses Michele Bachmann's image and
- [R.I.P., Bill Hamilton](https://chriswoodside.com/r-i-p-bill-hamilton/) - Bill Hamilton in New Hampshire in 2009 Early on Sept. 16, a great man, R. W. "Bill" Hamilton, died with little warning. Bill was a stalwart friend incapable of dull thoughts or actions. He believed in God and country, hard work and creativity. More than once he told me—in not these words—to stop whining and
- [Flannery O'Connor](https://chriswoodside.com/flannery-oconnor/) - Flannery O’Connor had to “write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don’t know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.” I have little in common with Flannery, much as I’d like to, except this requirement to write until
- [Nipmuck Trail Marathon](https://chriswoodside.com/nipmuck-trail-marathon/) - The rain pants came off an hour or so later. This shows me near the Nipmuck Trail crossing in Ashford, Connecticut, working at an aid station for runners. The race was the Nip Muck Marathon, as they call it. Inspiring as always. I did not get onto the trails as much as I normally do
- [Rest stops close and cars clog mountain lots](https://chriswoodside.com/rest-stops-close-and-cars-clog-mountain-lots/) - This greets anyone trying to go inside at the Chelmsford, Massachusetts, rest stop on I-495 northbound. I drove up to New Hampshire's White Mountains on Saturday of Columbus Day weekend. At the Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland Center in Crawford Notch, I gave a talk about why the trails in the Whites tend to go straight
- [Top strange facts learned in Miami](https://chriswoodside.com/top-strange-facts-learned-in-miami/) - Chris, hatless in red shirt, slogs with journalists through the Everglades Low water flows—from Everglades National Park interpretor Alan Scott: Water flow in the Everglades is only one-sixth what it used to be 100 years ago. Development has halted water flow south of the gigantic Lake Okeechobee, which is supposed to feed the Everglades by
- [Most Significant: How Long They Stayed](https://chriswoodside.com/most-significant-how-long-they-stayed/) - The protesters' camp in Zuccotti Park, lower Manhattan, covered in the rain. David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons What amazes me the most about the Occupy Wall Street protest is how long the city allowed it to go on peacefully. I guess I was cynical, believing that any day from September 16 on, the police would move in
- [Car, Plane, or Train?](https://chriswoodside.com/car-plane-or-train/) - During this high-travel pre-holiday season, consider some surprising findings on the carbon footprint of traveling, courtesy of Matthew McDermott of Planet Green/TLC: * For long distances, buses emit less carbon than trains. Trains still are pretty good choices, and as long as they aren't breaking down (as the Amtrak a colleague of mine rode to
- [What to do with the card I sent](https://chriswoodside.com/what-to-do-with-the-card-i-sent/) - Asylum Reservoir Number 2, Mattabesett Trail, part of the New England Trail, Middletown, Connecticut All the green gurus advise against sending holiday cards, but I sent two different ones out this season. I think that paper correspondence remains one of the great domestic arts. One of my cards was a 5-by-7-inch postcard thanking some of
- [Low snow year (not counting October)](https://chriswoodside.com/low-snow-year-not-counting-october/) - On Mount Washington, New Hampshire: October 2011 Average monthly snowfall (1971-2000): 14 inches Actual snowfall in October: 20.7 November 2011 Average monthly snowfall: 40.4 Actual snowfall: 18.6 December 2011: Average monthly snowfall: 50 inches. Total snowfall in December: 38 inches. Statistics galore See the Mount Washington Observatory.
- [Shutting off the lights at work](https://chriswoodside.com/shutting-off-the-lights-at-work/) - The report suggests motivating office workers with stickers like this, available at awarenessideas.com The courage to change should begin from the top—with the boss: Turn off the lights. Shut down the computer monitors. Print on both sides of the paper. Stop buying bottled water. Just acting different could cut energy use in offices by 4
- [Little House writing process, redux](https://chriswoodside.com/little-house-writing-process-redux/) - Laura Ingalls Wilder at about age 50, before she wrote the "Little House" books. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library My heroine is Laura Ingalls Wilder. She's not the woman I thought she was. Still a great woman, but a much different one than I thought. As I work through the drafts of my book on the
- [Water scientist leaked conservative institute documents](https://chriswoodside.com/water-scientist-leaked-conservative-institute-documents/) - Peter H. Gleick, an esteemed climate scientist whose specialty is water, admitted this week that he had pretended he was someone else to receive documents from the conservative Heartland Institute. He said in a statement that he had practiced this deception out of frustration. This winter someone mailed him a printed document that supposedly outlined the Heartland
- [The wilderness narrative](https://chriswoodside.com/the-wilderness-narrative/) - Wilderness essayists, flock to this contest, which I help to judge. The Waterman Fund seeks the submission of essays about life in the mountains of the northeastern U.S. for its annual Waterman Fund Alpine Essay Contest. Wildness! Are you finding it where you least expect? Did you go in search and it wasn’t there? The
- [The narrower, yet expanding, environment beat](https://chriswoodside.com/the-narrower-yet-expanding-environment-beat/) - The sea continues to rise a few centimeters per year. Long Island Sound off Bridgeport, Connecticut. When I look back on my first years covering the environment in the 1990s, it looks like a lost era of innocence. When I began covering the environment beat for a daily newspaper, my focus was government enforcement and
- [Salaries](https://chriswoodside.com/salaries/) - Median per-capita income* in the United States: $52,673 Mitt Romney’s income: 21.7 million in 2010. (He and his wife, Ann, donated 16 percent, about 3.5 million, of their income to charity.) Former Senator Rick Santorum’s income in 2010: $923,000 Newt Gingrich and his wife, Calista’s, reported income in 2010: $3,162,424 Rep. Ron Paul’s salary: $174,000
- [A tribute to environmental writer Peter Lord](https://chriswoodside.com/a-tribute-to-environmental-writer-peter-lord/) - Peter Lord, at left in shirtsleeves, talked to Metcalf Institute fellows in 2007 with Providence Journal publisher Joel Rawson and me (in black blazer to Pete's left) My colleague and friend, Peter B. Lord, has been fighting brain cancer. He is only 60 years old and was working full-tilt at the Providence Journal last May
- [R.I.P. Peter B. Lord](https://chriswoodside.com/r-i-p-peter-b-lord/) - Peter Lord at a Metcalf Institute workshop a few years ago. (Photo from the Metcalf Institute) Environment reporter Peter Lord died on April 4. I am grateful for the years I worked with him on the Advisory Board of the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting at the University of Rhode Island. I will
- [Shrinking Glaciers](https://chriswoodside.com/shrinking-glaciers/) - David Breashears holds George Mallory's 1921 image of the Main Rongbuk Glacier in front of how it looked in 2007. GlacierWorks photo. The MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts decided to launch its first big public exhibit on a controversial aspect of "one of the most complicated and difficult issues to deal with, scientifically, politically, and
- [Waterman Fund annual dinner](https://chriswoodside.com/waterman-fund-annual-dinner/) - Laura Waterman, left, awarded the Guy Waterman Alpine Stewardship Award to forester and writer Rebecca Oreskes Appalachia journal and the career of Rebecca Oreskes both got the attention at the annual dinner of an organization that works to protect alpine summits in the northeastern United States. It took place on Saturday, April 14 in Jackson, New
- [Crediting sources](https://chriswoodside.com/crediting-sources/) - I wrote this for contributors to Connecticut Woodlands magazine. Its advice should help any writer getting started in journalism. In this age of the internet, writers must be extremely careful not to inadvertently plagiarize by cutting (from web sources) ideas, quotations, background, or even most facts, and then pasting them into your article without proper
- [Races](https://chriswoodside.com/races/) - Chris, left, with Dave Almand of the Shenipsit Striders running club and Skip Weisenburger, right, my aid station cohort. On Saturday, May 18, my husband, Nat and I joined some friends from our church to run in the Bishop's 5K for Kids, a road race in West Hartford. I have made this a priority the
- [Moody skies over Pattagansett River](https://chriswoodside.com/moody-skies-over-pattagansett-river/) - Judy Benson on geologic history. One good aspect of my journalist friend Judy Benson's yearly furlough from The Day, where we met when I was working there, is that we go kayaking once a year. On a Monday we left the business world behind for a half-day as we dipped the blades into the Fourmile
- [Don't take the train. That's a certain train line's slogan](https://chriswoodside.com/dont-take-the-train-thats-a-certain-train-lines-slogan/) - Why does a certain train line that begins with an "A" cost more the later they sell their tickets? Tonight the one-way cost for a ride from Old Saybrook, Connecticut to Boston was $39 at 8:30 p.m. I had to stop the reservation process because some dear friends had invited us to dinner. At 10:30
- [Back on the ridges, three days](https://chriswoodside.com/back-on-the-ridges-three-days/) - View from the top of Mount Hight, Carter-Moriah Range, White Mountains, New Hampshire Almost three weeks ago I went by myself on a three-day hiking trip in the Carter-Moriah Range of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Black flies outnumbered people. But I noticed when I dropped off the ridge, down the Rainbow Trail into
- [It's all fine for them. They wear ear protection.](https://chriswoodside.com/its-all-fine-for-them-they-wear-ear-protection/) - Worker with leaf-blower. Photo by Hector Alejandro, Wikimedia The neighborhoods now have roared to life with motorized blowers (see the photo) and hedge clippers. Many workers who use them wear ear protection. It's all fine for them, but what about the second-hand noise, the distractions everyone around these must accept? Frequent exposure to loud noise
- [From a reader of Energy Independence](https://chriswoodside.com/from-a-reader-of-energy-independence/) - His house on Prince Edward island I received this note from a Canadian reader of my book, Energy Independence: "I just finished your 2009 updated version, and I must say I liked it a lot. Obvious you are a word professional, as it flows so nicely, is understandable, and gets across lots of ideas that are
- [Somewhere new](https://chriswoodside.com/somewhere-new/) - Stone piles on the ridge of Temple Mountain. Part of the old ski area? Definitely augmented by amateur rock artists now. I'm spending the week at a family cottage in southwestern New Hampshire, near Mount Monadnock, supposedly the second-most most climbed mountain in the world, behind Mount Fuji. Monadnock commands attention from a very wide
- [Alaska anyone?](https://chriswoodside.com/alaska-anyone/) - [et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″] [et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] The cover of Summer/Fall 2012 Appalachia journal The new Appalachia journal is out. Five writers tell why they went to Alaska and why they stayed or didn’t. Subscribe here. North to Alaska: One erstwhile Northeasterner’s ongoing journey toward the Elysium of his dreams. · JEFF FAIR Loving and
- [Actor's Kilimanjaro quest, etc.](https://chriswoodside.com/actors-kilimanjaro-quest-etc/) - The Longest Way Home cover Thumbing through the latest New York Times style magazine, I stumbled upon a piece by actor Andrew McCarthy, about his climb of Africa's highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, as a test of his ability to be loyal and consistent. He leaves behind a fiancee who is planning their wedding (McCarthy's second)
- [Groundbreaking without realizing it](https://chriswoodside.com/groundbreaking-without-realizing-it/) - Ann Weathersby's NY Times photo of Reuben and Patsy Prater. His contracting biz went bust with Russell Athletic's demise. She quit college for him, never finished, has a neat job in social services. An incredible piece of reporting on the underreported domestic side of the economic bust. These women are about my age. I'm struck by how
- [Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike Memory](https://chriswoodside.com/appalachian-trail-thru-hike-memory/) - We were leaving a town that day; that's why we look fairly clean. I have been thinking this week about our thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, 25 years ago. Just had to post this photo of my husband, Nat Eddy, and me standing on the trail where it crossed a dam (can't recall which one,
- [Lubbock, Texas](https://chriswoodside.com/lubbock-texas/) - WW SPAR, one of the many varieties of the nonnative Old World Bluestem grass that recovers more quickly from drought This grass might not look like much, but it's a special grass planted because droughts have become more frequent in western Texas. Here at the Matador Ranch, one of the many enterprises of the Koch
- [Full moon over flooding river](https://chriswoodside.com/full-moon-over-flooding-river/) - A very dark shot. The Deep River, Connecticut town landing at around 9:15 p.m. Monday night of storm Sandy.The lapping water, lit by our car's headlights and the full moon above, has covered boat landing and parking lot. We skirted this as we drove in. The wind has been whipping around my small riverfront town
- [Climate change makes it into acceptance speech](https://chriswoodside.com/climate-change-makes-it-into-acceptance-speech/) - President Obama, in his acceptance speech early Wednesday morning: "We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened up by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet." A warming plant—a rising average world temperature that results in crazy weather in some places and serene
- [Not for the holiday wreath](https://chriswoodside.com/not-for-the-holiday-wreath/) - Berries all along the branch. That's how you know it's the invasive kind. A friend asked me once for cuttings of Oriental bittersweet from my front yard. She wanted to make a holiday wreath with it. "Ugh! Has that grown back again?" was my response. But this was several years ago. Now moving, growing, and
- [Happy 2013](https://chriswoodside.com/happy-2013/) - Hermit Lake below Mount Washington, August 2012 Wishing you a year of honest, productive work.
- [Communication blackout: first in a series](https://chriswoodside.com/communication-blackout-first-in-a-series/) - Technology actually keeps many smart people from reaching each other. I believe that, and I'm going to show you how. Trey Popp's article on the downside of online job-hiring software proves the point. In late 2012, the federal government reported 3.6 million job openings remained unfilled. Yet, as Popp wrote, "for every one of those
- [Communication blackout 2](https://chriswoodside.com/communication-blackout-2/) - In 1960, 21 percent of Americans had no telephone. Today, the same proportion of Americans have no internet. Try calling the phone company or ordering something by telephone or buying stamps at the post office? You find that they funnel you to the Web! Even the U.S. Postal Service wants us to order stamps online!
- [Communication blackout 3: the submerged cell phone](https://chriswoodside.com/communication-blackout-3-the-submerged-cell-phone/) - Photo from copyrightfreecontent.com Cell phones have become the major link to the outside world. In another generation, land lines will be unusual tools only used in remote areas or hospitals. Most cell phones are smooth-edged and very difficult to hold. The buttons are slippery, the cases even more so, and it's very easy to drop
- [History of Daylight Saving Time](https://chriswoodside.com/history-of-daylight-saving-time/) - If you ever wonder how America ended up with the artificial turning-ahead of clocks that we call Daylight Saving Time, my article, from Appalachia journal, will interest you. Daylight saving time currently prevails for the majority of the year. In March, the dark mornings remind us of the winters of 1974 and 1975, during the Middle
- [When missing letters influence scholars](https://chriswoodside.com/when-missing-letters-influence-scholars/) - Willa Cather, the author of the pioneer classic O Pioneers!, did not want her personal letters released to the public. But her extended family, in complying with this request, actually contributed to a climate of misinterpretation in the scholarly world. That will change this month with the release of the first volume of compiled letters
- [The Power of Narrative](https://chriswoodside.com/the-power-of-narrative/) - From my notebook, at the Power of Narrative conference this weekend at Boston University: Straight narrative approach doesn't always work in science writing. (Ellen Ruppel Shell) Amy Ellis Nutt's first big science series asked the big questions. She picked two scientists for each as a way in. She asked them about their personal passions for science: "What
- [Fan mail](https://chriswoodside.com/fan-mail/) - Rocks, early May, Canfield Woods, Deep River, Connecticut. These have nothing to do with the fan mail, but I like them. I received a fan letter today—a card, with a painting of Lady's slippers or a similar wildflower on the front, handwritten, mailed via the U.S. Postal Service— from a writer whose work I admire.
- [Metcalf Institute science immersion fellowship marks 15 years](https://chriswoodside.com/metcalf-institute-science-immersion-fellowship-marks-15-years/) - 1999 Metcalf fellows; Woodside in front row on right in purple I was in the first class of fellows at the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography, in 1999. This weeklong experience sends about a dozen journalists into the field with scientists, learning about
- [Mountains, a place to find what matters](https://chriswoodside.com/mountains-a-place-to-find-what-matters/) - Chris Woodside on the ridge between Mount Lafayette and Mount Garfield, White Mountains, New Hampshire Last week I climbed five mountains, mostly in fog and mist. The White Mountains of New Hampshire always take me back to myself. There, I meet writers and aspiring writers. But most important, I meet, again, myself. I remembered another
- [Watch for my story about Little House books in Boston Globe](https://chriswoodside.com/watch-for-my-story-about-little-house-books-in-boston-globe/) - Rose Wilder Lane in the late 1930s, when she was working on the later Little House books with her mother Watch this Sunday's "Ideas" section in the Boston Globe for my story about the recasting of the pioneers as individualistic heroes in the "Little House" books. More to come!
- [Little Libertarians on the Prairie](https://chriswoodside.com/little-libertarians-on-the-prairie/) - Illustration by Boris Kulikov for the Boston Globe Was a beloved children's series written as an anti-New Deal fable? The Wilder family papers suggest yes. A FEW MONTHS AFTER the stock market crash, in the winter of 1930, Laura Ingalls Wilder sat at a small desk in Mansfield, Mo., and began writing down her life story in pencil. She had rattled
- [Desk work, late summer](https://chriswoodside.com/desk-work-late-summer/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.106″ background_layout=”light”] Starting a day in the back of my kitchen before heading to the office in Chester. It’s been a heck of a busy summer, and next week I’ll be taking some time off with my daughters and husband. Then from September 1-11 I’ll be on a writing retreat in northern
- [Raising roads for rising seas](https://chriswoodside.com/raising-roads-for-rising-seas/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.106″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] Town planners know they can’t avoid dealing with sea-level rise. I am writing an article about how coastal Connecticut’s municipal leaders are changing the way they manage roads, emergency services, zoning, and building permits. Sea level has
- [Woodlands: 76 Years of a Powerful Little Magazine](https://chriswoodside.com/woodlands-76-years-of-a-powerful-little-magazine/) - Woodlands comes out quarterly and circulates to members of CFPA and at libraries On Friday night, October 18, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., I will present the history of Connecticut Woodlands magazine, which I have edited since 2001, and its contribution to the Connecticut environmental canon, with highlights of especially great/memorable articles published since its
- [Open Letter to Libertarians](https://chriswoodside.com/open-letter-to-libertarians/) - My article in the Boston Globe and PBS News Hour blog prompted libertarians to write suggesting I have a political stance in reporting the political overtones of the Little House books. For the record, I am registered as an unaffiliated voter in my home state. I do not come to my work on Laura Ingalls Wilder with
- [November in Crawford Notch](https://chriswoodside.com/november-in-crawford-notch/) - Mount Willard, above Crawford Notch, White Mountains, New Hampshire When I can feel the invisible hands of not-knowing-what-to-write grabbing me around the neck, I know it's time to head up into the mountains. What is it about the lovely (and sometimes not lovely) distractions of normal life that muddy clear thinking? It's something about my
- [New work update](https://chriswoodside.com/new-work-update/) - Dry in this photo, but the marsh by Old Quarry Road in Guilford, CT, floods the pavement in storms. * I'm getting ready to head to the Pacific Northwest in two weeks. I will visit Seattle to learn about its efforts to use less energy, and the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute in Corvallis, Oregon.
- [Coastal towns cope with rising sea](https://chriswoodside.com/coastal-towns-cope-with-rising-sea/) - Damaged house in Brooklyn, N.Y., after Hurricane Sandy, 2012. Wikimedia Commons The steady rise of the sea along the coasts of the United States has led towns and cities to change how they give out building permits, respond to emergencies, and navigate their roads. I have written two stories that focus in on three towns
- [Olympic hosts reject American yogurt](https://chriswoodside.com/olympic-hosts-reject-american-yogurt/) - Plain Chobani yogurt. Image via wendyweekendgourmet.com The New York State-based Greek yogurt company, Chobani, supported the United States OIympic Team and wanted the athletes to eat the "official yogurt" in Sochi. But the Russians would not allow the yogurt into the country, citing the ban on U.S. dairy products going back to 2010. In fights over yogurt,
- [Daylight acceleration time](https://chriswoodside.com/daylight-acceleration-time/) - U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms Charles P. Higgins turns the Ohio Clock forward for the first Daylight Saving Time in 1918. Senators William M. Calder (NY), Willard Saulsbury, Jr. (DE), and Joseph T. Robinson (AR) stand in front. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Daylight saving time returns to the United States on March 9, 2014. Thousands of years
- [80 years since the Dust Bowl's horrible drought](https://chriswoodside.com/80-years-since-the-dust-bowls-horrible-drought/) - Dust buries a South Dakota farm in 1936. Wikimedia Commons Eighty years ago, in 1934, over-plowed land in the interior lands of the United States began to spread. The drought was the worst in American history. As Public Broadcasting said in its meticulous notes about that period, dust storms spread beyond the boundaries of what
- [My AT thru-hike](https://chriswoodside.com/my-at-thru-hike/) - The Eight-Legged Thing on Katahdin, end of our thru-hike, from left: Cay, Phil, Chris, Nat. Photo by Cowboy Paul Lybarger. The thin paperback’s cover bent back. My friend Phil held it up above his head in his left hand and tipped the page toward the beam of his tiny flashlight. He lay on his back
- [Save the date: Writing from the natural world, June 12-14, 2015](https://chriswoodside.com/save-the-date-writing-from-the-natural-world-june-12-14-2015/) - Chris Woodside on Lafayette Mountain, White Mountains, New Hampshire I, Chris Woodside, will lead a three-day writing workshop on the shores of incredible Squam Lake next June. Mark your calendars and join me on June 12, 13, and 14 at Rockywold-Deephaven Camps in Holderness, New Hampshire. Details coming. Lodging and good food in a dining hall included
- [Iowa and Wisconsin](https://chriswoodside.com/iowa-and-wisconsin/) - Horseshoe Lake, way the heck north in Wisconsin, near where Bill Holtz lives William Holtz was an English professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia when he stumbled upon the papers of Rose Wilder Lane. He committed himself to writing her biography even though this meant putting aside his work on environmental thinkers like Joseph Krutch
- [The dark side of the Little House author](https://chriswoodside.com/the-dark-side-of-the-little-house-author/) - Laura Ingalls Wilder in her 40s, when she was just starting her writing career as a columnist for the Missouri Ruralist. Courtesy of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library More news emerged this week showing the public's fascination with the pioneer tales of Laura Ingalls Wilder, subject of my next book, Libertarians on the Prairie. A biographer
- [Writing From Nature: Sneak Peek, June 12-14, 2015](https://chriswoodside.com/writing-from-nature-sneak-peek-june-12-14-2015/) - Rockywold-Deephaven Camps, Squam Lake, New Hampshire, site of the workshop Unearthing Ideas in the Elements: Three Days on Squam Lake with Chris Woodside Many writers already realize that their work is not merely an indoor, sedentary pursuit but that the best ideas come in a flash while we are doing other things that have nothing
- [Looking Back on the Outdoor Season](https://chriswoodside.com/looking-back-on-the-outdoor-season/) - Connecticut River, looking south from Chester, CT, November 11, 2014 Armistice Day. Veterans' Day. Four months until my birthday. Opening day of late duck-hunting season. I took this photo of the Connecticut River in Chester, Connecticut, while out for a walk with my friend Priscilla. Shots rang in the distance, but we could not see
- [Testimonials from my writing students](https://chriswoodside.com/testimonials-from-my-writing-students/) - Chris guest-teaching journalism students at the University of Hartford In 2010, I taught a course called "Writing in Motion" at the Green Street Arts Center in Middletown, Connecticut. I still gather for meals, reading, and talk with three of my former students in that class. The class included a professional medical writer, a journalist who
- [Laura Ingalls Wilder's memoirs, and what they reveal](https://chriswoodside.com/laura-ingalls-wilders-memoirs-and-what-they-reveal/) - The cover of the newly published memoir reveals an idealized image of the young Laura Ingalls Wilder In her annotations to the newly released Pioneer Girl, Laura Ingalls Wilder's earliest-known memoir, editor Pamela Smith Hill perpetuates an idea that I think caters to a mistaken notion of fans—that Wilder was more in control of the famous children's series—called
- [New Hampshire circuit](https://chriswoodside.com/new-hampshire-circuit/) - Stream that feeds into Ammonoosuc Lake, Crawford North, NH I have just returned from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. My knee has been acting up, so I did not hike very much—just the Around-the-Lake Trail in Crawford Notch. I gave two evening talks, one at the Highland Center in Crawford Notch, and the other
- [Announcing the keynote speaker at my June writing workshop](https://chriswoodside.com/announcing-the-keynote-speaker-at-my-june-writing-workshop/) - Mark Kramer Announcing the keynote speaker at my Writing from Nature workshop this June 12-14: Mark Kramer, narrative writer and teacher, director of Boston University's The Power of Narrative writing conference, my writing workshop leader, and author of the books Three Farms, Invasive Procedures, and more. Sign up by March 1 to get a 10-percent discount. A beautiful
- [Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthday](https://chriswoodside.com/laura-ingalls-wilders-birthday/) - Today's Laura Ingalls Wilder's 148th birthday, and Google's Doodle took note. Americans are thinking about the pioneer author, and I know the time is ripening for my next book, Libertarians on the Prairie: The Creation of a Pioneer Myth, which I hope will be out within the next year. The Little House books, about life on the
- [Laura Ingalls Wilder died on this day in 1957](https://chriswoodside.com/laura-ingalls-wilder-died-on-this-day-in-1957/) - Laura signs copies of her books at Brown's Bookstore in Springfield, Missouri, October 1952. As far as I know, this photo is not copyrighted but was a publicity shot for a newspaper. A few days ago, on February 7, the world—that is, Google, and Laura Ingalls Wilder fans—noted the 148th birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Today
- [Getting ready to find new ideas](https://chriswoodside.com/getting-ready-to-find-new-ideas/) - Rock wall, Black Trail, Canfield Woods, Deep River, CT My best ideas for writing come when I carry no pen, pad, or recorder. I trudge up a muddy hill. I pick up a branch that fell in the path and fling it off into the leaves. The mud smells like minerals. I'm fighting through an
- [Meet the Appalachia writers: Elissa Ely](https://chriswoodside.com/meet-the-appalachia-writers-elissa-ely/) - Elissa Ely's dog, Cooper, on Moosilauke A small white envelope hand-addressed to me appeared in the pile of bills and junk mail a few years ago. I opened it up and found a flowered card. It was from Dr. Elissa Ely, a Boston psychiatrist and writer. She has recorded and written personal essays for public
- [A Field Guide to a Morning](https://chriswoodside.com/a-field-guide-to-a-morning/) - Here I am with a pitch pine branch and cones, the bait lid, and birch bark. In my workshop, Writing from Nature, we spent one morning collecting. Collecting can mean picking up some things like pine cones, leaves, bark, or acorns or it can mean drawing or taking photographs of plants, animals, trees. When we
- [Laura Ingalls Wilder devotees follow details](https://chriswoodside.com/laura-ingalls-wilder-devotees-follow-details/) - Beth Tarini, M.D., shares her deductions on scarlet fever and why that did not blind Mary Ingalls I am at a conference of Laura Ingalls Wilder enthusiasts. It's called Laurapalooza. This name injects a lighter air to reality. Roughly 160 followers of the humble inspiration oin the Little House books research every lead they find
- [Back from the Mountains](https://chriswoodside.com/back-from-the-mountains/) - Shadow clouds and shadow human on Mount Garfield. Early this week, my husband Nat, daughters Elizabeth and Annie, and Elizabeth's boyfriend, Greg, hiked up to Mount Garfield in the White Mountains and stayed at Garfield Ridge Campsite. Sixteen mountains in the United States are named after the president who was assassinated one year into his
- [Retreat over, have emerged](https://chriswoodside.com/retreat-over-have-emerged/) - Madison and Adams seen from the Diagonal Trail in Randolph, NH I retreated to Randolph, New Hamphire. For two weeks. I wrote and edited chapters of my next book, Libertarians on the Prairie. I revised and printed out. I revised again and printed out again. I looked at Mount Madison and Mount Adams, visible from my
- [Sunday afternoon thoughts](https://chriswoodside.com/sunday-afternoon-thoughts/) - Left-right: My sister-in-law Julie Gribbins, niece Shannon Gribbins, me, and my sister, Anne Woodside Gribbins. Here in southern California—er, I mean rainless Deep River, Connecticut—my husband and I visited for a few hours this afternoon with my sister Annie. She and her daughter, Shannon, were on their way back to New Jersey after a weekend
- [Book is in to the publisher](https://chriswoodside.com/book-is-in-to-the-publisher/) - Laura Ingalls Wilder with Rose Wilder Lane (apparently), Mansfield, Missouri, early 1900s. Hi everybody, I've come up for air. I was working very hard the last several months, not only editing Connecticut Woodlands magazine for CFPA and Appalachia journal for the AMC, but finishing my book about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Libertarians on
- [My favorite bits on what the holidays should really mean](https://chriswoodside.com/my-favorite-bits-on-what-the-holidays-should-really-mean/) - Was I freaked out? The day before this, possibly. Who cares? This is a beautiful memory... my daughters in the living room on Christmas. That's all I can remember. The joy. "A man began enumerating all the things that had bothered him about his family at their last Christmas reunion: His brother had been overly
- ["Writers from the natural world"](https://chriswoodside.com/writers-from-the-natural-world/) - Light from Squam Lake reaches into the living room of Longhouse, Rockywold-Deephaven Camps The tag on our dining room table at last June's writing workshop called us "Writers from the Natural World." The actual name of my workshop is Writing from Nature. I loved the minor adjustment in our table sign. Every meal, I'd say
- [Squatter farmers of long ago](https://chriswoodside.com/squatter-farmers-of-long-ago/) - Sand plains near an industrial site in central Connecticut. In the 18th century, squatter farmers in central Connecticut tried to grow crops on sand plains. They failed, because the soil resembles the desert, and they abandoned the land. Particular plants and trees thrive on sand plains, or sand barrens, just as very particular plants adapt
- [Observing without a notebook or cell phone](https://chriswoodside.com/observing-without-a-notebook-or-cell-phone/) - I believe this is the Amphibrach Trail in the White Mountains. Resist the temptation to write or photograph as you walk through the fields or woods or desert or bog. When we stop and consider the right word while looking at the broken bird's egg, we lose part of our reaction. The same disconnect apparently
- [A slim biography of masterful storytelling](https://chriswoodside.com/a-slim-biography-of-masterful-storytelling/) - President Woodrow Wilson and his second wife, Edith, in 1922. Photo from Library of Congress A 125-page biography in the Penguin Lives series blends storytelling and journalism in a clear, fast-paced overview of a complicated man, Woodrow Wilson. The novelist Louis Auchincloss synthesized many thousands of pages of reading and understanding. A writer who studies
- [Long 91-Mile Trail](https://chriswoodside.com/long-91-mile-trail/) - On Burnt Rock Mountain My husband Nat and I are back from our 91-mile adventure on the Long Trail! We met some incredibly strong, funny, thoughtful, adventurous people. And trekked for two days with our dear friend and mountain companion Skip. Thanks, Candlelight and Velveeta, Trailspice, Becky and Levi, the Utah couple, Babyface and Stefan,
- [Writing Laura Ingalls Wilder's pioneer life](https://chriswoodside.com/writing-laura-ingalls-wilders-pioneer-life/) - Map of Laura and Rose's homes by Karen Ward This map by my talented colleague Karen Ward records all of the homes of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, the novelist and libertarian-movement founder Rose Wilder Lane. Look at the dates for Mansfield, Missouri. Two key periods, in the mid-1920s and again from 1928-1935, found
- [Laura Ingalls Wilder as a Voter](https://chriswoodside.com/laura-ingalls-wilder-as-a-voter/) - Alf Landon campaigning in 1936. ljworld.com Laura Ingalls Wilder devotees asked themselves last week how Laura might have voted in the recent election. I don't think I have to answer that directly. Laura was approaching her later years when women were granted the vote. But assuming that she did go to the polls in her
- [Procrastination no more](https://chriswoodside.com/procrastination-no-more/) - In the archives room at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. Talk about getting things done. It's the time of year when I give up something, something that's hard to give up. My exercise this year is giving up putting off projects or tasks or dreams. I've got a few days of light work between deadlines,
- [Danbury, Connecticut and the Little House books](https://chriswoodside.com/danbury-connecticut-and-the-little-house-books/) - Rose Wilder Lane in Danbury. Photo from William Holtz papers at Hoover Library Not everyone realizes that the city of Danbury, Connecticut was an important landscape in the making of the pioneer stories, the Little House books. Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter and collaborator, Rose Wilder Lane, lived in Danbury for three decades. There, she revised
- [Appearances for Libertarians on the Prairie](https://chriswoodside.com/appearances-for-libertarians-on-the-prairie/) - Laura Ingalls Wilder in Mansfield, Missouri Libertarians on the Prairie, Chris's biography of the secret coauthors of the Little House on the Prairie books, continues to get out there. She will give a keynote speech on Thursday, July 13 at a gathering of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane researchers, the Laurapalooza, in Springfield, Missouri. Her speech is called,
- [On paperback prefaces](https://chriswoodside.com/on-paperback-prefaces/) - Laura Ingalls Wilder/Herbert Hoover Presidential Library I'm in my favorite retreat spot this week, Randolph, New Hampshire, holed up in front of a vista of Mount Madison and Mount Adams, writing a preface for the paperback edition of Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books. And
- [Studies!](https://chriswoodside.com/studies/) - I'm not physically here. But I'll go there sometimes. When's a good time for graduate school? Right now. I've started a history master's program at Arizona State University. The lectures and discussions are all online. I work out of my Connecticut office and take one course every seven and a half weeks. My first course is North
- [19 inches](https://chriswoodside.com/19-inches/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row custom_padding=”|||” _builder_version=”3.0.105″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text module_class=”entry-content” _builder_version=”3.0.106″ background_layout=”light”] Snowfall on Pasture Path, White Mountains, New Hampshire I spent this past week inside a house with my dog in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The first full day there, it snowed 19 inches. Snow creates the perfect writing landscape. Muffled, the
- [Spontaneous survival projects](https://chriswoodside.com/spontaneous-survival-projects/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial” _builder_version=”3.0.106″ background_layout=”light”] Each section was built when the farmers needed it. Deep River, Connecticut, winter 2018 For many years I thought people acted spontaneously in making history. I thought, for example, that Rosa Parks suddenly thought she’d had enough of segregated buses in Alabama
- [Moments frozen in memory](https://chriswoodside.com/moments-frozen-in-memory/) - Chris and her mother, Gloria, summer 2016 It’s the universal experience: aging. And yet this feels like my family faces unique fears. My mother’s physical universe is shrinking as she prepares to live somewhere where she can get the help she needs at any hour. Her mental universe, though, seems to expand, even if it
- [Searching for a Lyme disease test](https://chriswoodside.com/searching-for-a-lyme-disease-test/) - [et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial” _builder_version=”3.0.106″ background_layout=”light”] The aggressive Lyme spirochete, which can turn itself into a blob and hide in tissues. Shown here magnified on a computer screen at the Western Connecticut Health Network Research Center. The Connecticut Health Investigative Team has released my story on the search
- [A forgotten book](https://chriswoodside.com/a-forgotten-book/) - Editor's Note A forgotten book One spring morning, I wrenched myself away from the kitchen table and went on a run. You know how that is. Work beckons but if you don't get some exercise now, you'll start snapping at people. It was starting to rain. I loped onto my 3-mile route, out Union Street

## Pages

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- [Writing Workshops](https://chriswoodside.com/writing-workshops/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.27.2″ custom_margin=”0px|||” custom_padding=”35px|0px|61px|0px||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.5″ _module_preset=”default” header_text_color=”#9F282A” header_2_text_color=”#FFFFFF” width=”100%” width_tablet=”100%” width_phone=”100%” width_last_edited=”on|tablet” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”] Writing Workshops [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row custom_padding_last_edited=”on|tablet” admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”4.27.2″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_margin=”0px|||” custom_margin_tablet=”” custom_margin_phone=”” custom_margin_last_edited=”on|phone” custom_padding=”0px|||” custom_padding_tablet=”” custom_padding_phone=”0px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.16″ saved_tabs=”all” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https://chriswoodside.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Chris-Woodside-Writing-with-Woodside-500px.jpg” title_text=”Chris-Woodside-Writing-with-Woodside-500px” align=”center” align_tablet=”center” align_phone=”center”
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- [About](https://chriswoodside.com/about/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_image src=”https://chriswoodside.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/SamTurchinPhoto_20241126_ChrisWoodside_16_websize.jpg” _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” title_text=”Chris Woodside” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][/et_pb_image][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_margin=”50px||80px|” custom_margin_tablet=”0px|||” custom_margin_phone=”” custom_margin_last_edited=”on|phone” custom_padding=”0px|0px||||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”https://chriswoodside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/I.png” align=”center” align_tablet=”center” align_phone=”” align_last_edited=”on|desktop” _builder_version=”4.16″ max_width=”35%” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”] [/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”4.16″ width=”98.7%” custom_padding=”|0px||||” global_colors_info=”{}”] I am an environment and history
- [For my UConn students](https://chriswoodside.com/for-my-uconn-students/) - Lecture 9 early press history and Ben Franklin Lecture 10_Colonial and Revolutionary Press Lecture 11 Freedom of the press 1st amendment Lecture 12 The Penny Press, Fuller, Greeley Lecture 13_Civil War Lecture 14 Industrial America
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- [Newspaper Articles](https://chriswoodside.com/articles/newspaper-articles/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″ custom_margin=”50px|||” custom_margin_tablet=”0px|||” custom_margin_phone=”” custom_margin_last_edited=”on|phone” custom_padding=”0px|0px|0px|0px”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_margin=”||0px|” custom_padding=”0px|0px|0px|0px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”||||||||” header_text_color=”#ffffff” header_line_height=”1.4em” background_color=”#9f282a” custom_margin=”||0px|” custom_margin_tablet=”||0px|” custom_margin_phone=”||0px|” custom_margin_last_edited=”on|phone” custom_padding=”5px|||25px” custom_padding_tablet=”|||” custom_padding_phone=”” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|tablet”] Newspaper Articles [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ custom_padding_last_edited=”on|tablet” module_id=”blog” _builder_version=”3.22″ custom_padding=”0px||80px|” custom_padding_tablet=”50px||50px|” custom_padding_phone=”” transparent_background=”off”][et_pb_row column_structure=”3_4,1_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” custom_margin=”0px|||” custom_margin_tablet=”0px|||” custom_margin_phone=”0px|||” custom_margin_last_edited=”on|phone” custom_padding=”0|||”][et_pb_column type=”3_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”||||||||”
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- [Privacy Policy](https://chriswoodside.com/privacy-policy/) - [et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″ parallax=”off” parallax_method=”on”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” _builder_version=”3.0.47″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”] Who we are Our website address is: https://chriswoodside.com. What personal data we collect and why we collect it Comments When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also
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