“Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets visit her alone or with a single friend, at most. Everything evades you, everything hides, even your thoughts escape you when you walk in a crowd.” —  Edwin Way Teale, from “Circle of…

This week I begin my spring and summer volunteer work for the CT DEEP Wildlife Division to help monitor bats. This will be the fourth year I’m doing this work, and I have written about this important volunteer activity in past columns. Twice a month,…

“If the oak is the king of trees, as tradition has it, then the Eastern White Oak, throughout its range, is the king of kings.” — Donald Culross Peattie from “A Natural History of North American Trees” The last several years have been hard on…

“History, I like to think, is a larger way of looking at life. It is a source of strength, of inspiration. It is about who we are and what we stand for and is essential to our understanding of what our own role should be…

“All of nature is a going concern. The business of spring is a prospering. I stand for a long time beside the swamp stream in a fairyland setting of low-lying mist glowing and tinted with the pink of the sunrise. Here is beauty, here is…