Follow the Trail with Bill Reid,
The Last Green Valley's Chief Ranger
Consider Joining a Cleanup for Earth Day
Next Sunday is Earth Day, celebrated each year on April 22. For many of us who live and work here in The Last Green Valley, every day is our own personal earth day. We enjoy a region that remains 77 percent undeveloped land dominated by…
Spring’s Early Arrivers Have Made Their Return
Spring may be here, but at this writing many of our avian signs of spring are still to the south waiting for later departures. May is the month when songbirds seem to abound in New England with courtship songs, displays, territorial disputes and nest building.…
Time to Spring Outdoors
What a winter it has been here in The Last Green Valley. Winter skated into December with deep-freeze temperatures. January brought a whole new mind-boggling meteorological term, “bomb cyclone.” I didn’t hear a bomb or see a cyclone, though we had some snow and high…
Snowshoe Hare Hop Around Northern Parts of the State
Last month, I ventured to my family’s property in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. Located in the Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire, Fitzwilliam is about 90 minutes from where I live in Putnam. My grandparents bought the property in 1933, my father took it over in…
First Woman of Dentistry Practiced in Killingly
Over the past six months I have spent several hours in a dentist’s chair. My teeth have endured three crowns and paradental gum procedures. Luckily, I have dodged the dreaded root canal (so far). While I appreciate receiving much-needed and excellent dental care, getting to…
Mansfield Hollow Worth a Visit Any Time of Year
The morning of Feb. 10 was bright and sunny, with temperatures rising into the 30s and heading for the 40s. As I pulled into the parking area at Mansfield Hollow Lake and State Park, I found a dozen or more ice fishermen already set up…
Celebrate Presidential Visits to The Last Green Valley
Monday is Presidents’ Day, a national holiday held on the third Monday in February to celebrate all U.S. presidents past and present. For me, and I think for most folks my age, I remember the holiday as a birthday celebration of both George Washington (Feb.…
We Can All Work Together to Protect Bird Populations
Why do birds matter? As author Jonathan Franzen wrote in the January edition of National Geographic, “they are our last, best connection to a natural world that is otherwise receding.” As a subscriber to National Geographic, I was pleased to get my January issue and…
Famous rodent neither chucker of wood nor meteorologist
“How much wood could a woodchuck chuck If a woodchuck could chuck wood? As much wood as a woodchuck could chuck, If a woodchuck could chuck wood.” – Mother Goose Friday was Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, predicting six more weeks of…
White Birches Offer Many Uses
″…I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One…
Christmas Bird Count an Educational Experience
What do 1,185 birds of 43 different species all have in common? They were all counted in one small slice of The Last Green Valley National Heritage Corridor as part of the annual Christmas Bird Count. I participated in the count for the first time…
Difficult to Catch a Glimpse of the Shy River Otter
It was a freezing cold January morning in 1979. My job at Old Sturbridge Village that morning involved feeding and watering a dozen sheep, two cows, one calf and General Lee (a horse). Maggie, the cow, had been milked and was happily munching the last…