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Imagine hiking on the Bull Run Mountains on a cool fall day. In the flood plain, we find sycamores and tulip poplars four to five feet in diameter. After losing ourselves in a swift, cold stream teeming with darners, minnows, shiners, and brook trout, we try to decipher sights and sounds that are coming faster than our senses can discriminate. Immediately after departing one treasure, our upward ascent brings us to coves, hollows, and gentle eastern slopes that all appear to

Winter is approaching and fall has faded. Many birds are gone, some mammals have begun to hibernate, winter seeds are dotting otherwise lifeless looking plants, and the woods appear at first glance dull and slightly eerie. This all seems reasonable, considering that sunlight has dwindled, temperatures have dropped, and living seems hard. Go outside, look, listen, and smell the air. What we see are glimpses into the lives of minks, otters, weasels, foxes, bobcats, coyotes, mo

In George Peterken’s 1996 book Natural Woodland the British naturalist contrasts “original naturalness”—-“the state that existed before people became a significant ecological factor”—-with “present naturalness”, “the state which would prevail now if people had not become a significant factor”. One must remember that forests are constantly shaped by storms and fire. If a forest is spared human disturbances, over hundreds of years it can become “present naturalness”.

Earth’s most prestigious engineer, the beaver (Castor canadensis), as no other mammal alters the shape of the landscape and is as...