Follow the Trail with Bill Reid,
The Last Green Valley's Chief Ranger

Here comes Walktober! “I return with tautness gone, with delight in simple things heightened, with a sense of health and sanity and well-being. I feel more calm, more capable. I have been in contact with the enduring and the real. Cares have shrunk to proper…

“In summer we lay up a stock of experiences for winter, as the squirrel of nuts, – something for conversation in winter evenings. I love to think then of the more distant walks I took in summer.” Henry David Thoreau Welcome to the last month…

The sound was unmistakable and led me outdoors to face the thick woods across the road. In the advancing twilight the sound pierced the darkness again, and then again. The ghostly mournful wail, best described as a lonely whinny with “tremulous” descending pitch, could only…

Many of us have a deep fascination and connection with trees that seems imprinted within our genetic code. The first hominids to venture on two legs climbed down from trees yet maintained their arboreal residences. The safety of the upper branches and the readily available…

I think it was my twelfth birthday when I received a butterfly and moth capturing kit. It came with a fine-meshed insect net and other items for euthanizing and mounting specimens in a display frame. With my net in hand, I ventured forth to hunt…

“You may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden. Your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.” From “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” by Beatrix Potter These past two summers…

“Two butterflies spin round and round above the buddleia bush. I watch them disappear over the wild cherry trees, still whirling on an invisible axis like some heavenly body moving through space.” — “Circle of the Seasons: A Journal of a Naturalists Year, August 1,…

During the summer a mysterious, rare and unusual plant can be found in the deep shadows of the forest. Between June and September, pearly white ghost pipe plants appear. Hiding from the sun, they emerge near the base of mature trees and the cool moist…

Regular readers will recall that I have an interest in bats and that interest drove me to volunteer with the Wildlife Division of the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) to help it assess the bat population in the state. There are…

  “Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes Only two things that money can’t buy That’s true love & homegrown tomatoes” From the song “Homegrown Tomatoes” by Guy Clark For the past couple of years, I’ve had a dwindling relationship with my…

Welcome to July! Summer might have officially started back on June 21, but for me this month is when the summer finally settles in for its all too brief three-month turn on the calendar. To help you get in the July summer season mood, here…

In the last decade there has been a healthy “growing” in the number of farmers’ markets throughout the region. Across the country, throughout New England and here in The Last Green Valley the number and variety of farmers’ markets is a wonderful addition to our…