2001 – Issue 1 (April)
VA’s Iron Furnaces Sparked History Of Forest Abuse
images/avcovers/callietube.gif An early spring visit to the Roaring Run area of the Newcastle Ranger District in Virginia’s George Washington-Jefferson National Forest lifts off the winter blahs. Leaf buds are swelling on some of the trees, and yellow fringe trims witch hazel branches. On the soft, moist forest floor, perennial plants are beginning their regrowth for…
Read MoreBug Buddies: Some Insects Find Power In Numbers
images/voice_uploads/monarchclustr.gif Collecting sassafras sprays to feed the hungry cecropia caterpillars I was raising a couple of summers ago, I found a contingent of tiny caterpillars clustered on the underside of a leaf. They weren’t cecropias, or any other sassafras-eating caterpillar I knew. What struck me was the way they had arranged themselves: flank to flank,…
Read MoreModern Day Mountain Midwives Help At Home
Childbirth is no longer the mystifying, women-only topic it used to be. Nowadays, fathers are allowed in the delivery room, and sometimes even “catch” the baby. That is, if the hospital allows it, and if the hospital allows men in there at all. And only if there is a baby to catch, rather than a…
Read MoreThe Basket Man
images/voice_uploads/jessebutch.gif Jesse Butcher nearly lost one of his hands before he discovered what artistry it could perform. In fact, anyone who saw the lanky Tennessean in a hospital emergency room that spring day in 1977 would have considered him lucky just to be alive. “I was sawin’ locust poles for my neighbor, Earl Woods,” says…
Read MoreCores, Cougars & Corridors
Bob DeGroot has a dream. He dreams of a day when eastern cougars can travel unimpeded by development from the mountains of Pennsylvania into the Maryland hill country and across the spine of Appalachia into Virginia and West Virginia — all without leaving the protection of forest. DeGroot, president of the Maryland Alliance for Greenway…
Read MoreJulia “Butterfly” Hill Speaks At Sweet Briar College
Julia “Butterfly” Hill became a focus of international attention as she spent 738 days on a platform suspended 180 feet up in 1,000-year-old redwood tree in California. On March 13, as the featured speaker for the 3rd annual Julia B. Waxter Environmental Studies Forum at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, she spoke to an overflow…
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