Twenty-five years ago I bought a book in a used bookstore entitled FOREST SOILS because this was a subject that I knew little about. Once I got it home, I discovered that it was a textbook written in 1946 and it was dull and didactic. The book went up on my bookshelf, a monument to my good intentions.

There is much to discuss with Berry, more than I want to fit in here, but as I finish the Hubbard book and think of the body of work Berry produced I keep coming back to the essential human-ness of it all. 

A friend of mine needed a barn. So, by himself, he went into his woods and felled sixty and eighty foot trees (worst-first forestry), drug the logs out, milled them into timbers and after drying, timber framed the barn.

Our house is built around a boulder. The previous owners called it “Fred” and so we do as well. Fred is not small, not by any means, and it is easy to see why the house was built around it instead of moving Fred to make the house linear. Fred has been there for 220 million years. 

To live in the Sourlands is to live upstream.

This is not a slogan or a sentiment.
It is a physical condition.

In spring, the woodland wildflowers beguile us with their delicate beauty; in summer, the meadows are full of flowers, butterflies, and bees; in fall, the autumnal colors dazzle us. But what happens in late fall and early winter when these spectacular shows have passed?

By Kristen Falzon | Last year, I spent a dreary January day mindlessly scrolling through Facebook. I was deep in the winter blues and I felt a general sense of aimlessness.  A post inviting locals to attend a “Native Seed Sowing Extravaganza” caught my eye. I stopped scrolling.

As regular readers of these essays know, I have stopped writing new pieces about the flora and fauna of the Sourlands. But I haven't stopped walking there, nor have I stopped photographing.

How do they do it? How can woodpeckers bang their heads against trees hundreds of times with no apparent bad effect? Scientists all over the glob have asked this same question and they have concluded that there are a number of reasons why woodpeckers can do what humans could never do. 

By Yvonne Kunz |

I used to take the bird feeders in as soon as the weather turned warm. I figured the birds didn’t need my help for spring or summer. In 2020, I decided to leave them out year-round. Not only did it help the birds, but it also helped me as well.

Following are a few tips and helpful links you can use to create a bird-friendly tree at home to provide a safe and inviting space for birds – and a clear view for birdwatching.

Plants employ lots of interesting methods to ensure their survival – from seed dispersal to stratification. I’m going to share my secret for starting seeds that require cold stratification to break the seed coat – and protection from hungry critters.

All animals can’t rely upon fang or claw to defend themselves. Some have developed unexpected defenses, like vultures who will projectile vomit at a predator, or fish that travel in large numbers so that any one fish is likely to escape, or caterpillars of monarch butterflies that eat toxic plants and become toxic themselves.

I have been walking in the Sourlands for decades but I have never seen an owl there. (I took the photos in this essay somewhere else.) Many environmental groups offer evening “owl prowls” to their members, often in the Sourlands, and those hikes always tweak my interest, but I have never gone.

I decided to take a walk in the woods on a Sunday morning in January, looking closely at the landscape and noting my thoughts and what I saw. It had rained most of the day before, so the path and the forest floor were quite wet.  

This past December started with a string of gray, rainy days and I spent much of the time staying inside and reading. But it is always difficult for me to stay indoors day after day, and soon I was pacing around the house and checking the refrigerator and cupboards regularly, hoping to find a delicious little snack that I had somehow overlooked on a previous visit.

Lyanda Lynn Haupt's book Rooted provides a beautiful narrative on the sacred bond between humans and the environment, a connection she calls "kithship." She argues that while we have become afraid of solitude and increasingly disconnected from the natural world, a condition she calls "species loneliness," the book serves as a prescription for this ailment.

Spring is in the air! From daffodils poking through the snow to the deep, buzzy song of the American Woodcock, the signs are everywhere. Many trees are tinged red with waking buds, while skunk cabbage blossoms melt the surrounding snow. Look for fresh woodpecker holes, Red-Shouldered Hawks gathering grass for nests, and robins on the ground. Don’t let the chilly weather stop you—bundle up, go for a walk, and enjoy spring on the Mountain!

Despite being forgotten on many maps, the Sourland's hamlets and villages have a rich history. These unincorporated communities, such as Neshanic, Montgomery, and Zion, are easy to drive through without recognizing their significance. From the mid-18th-century Neshanic Reformed Church to the historic Stoutsburg Cemetery, the final resting place of African American Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers, these sites are a testament to the past. While some, like the Wertsville general store and the hamlet of Rileyville, have faded, others like Mt Airy, Furman's Corner, and Linvale are still referenced today, reminding us of the region's enduring past.

One of the first things that I read when I started research on goldenrod is that its leaves are good to eat, the flowers are a good addition to a salad and that Native Americans ate the seeds. I knew about a nearby patch of Canada goldenrod, so I closed my computer and went out for a taste test. The leaves were somewhat minty but not very good. The flowers tasted awful. I