When my youngest daughter was around eight years old, a friend suggested I might be interested in a book called “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv. My immediate...

The end of winter is marked by the melting of the ice.This is one of the two most miraculous events of the year. The other miracle, naturally, is when the...

You might think April was a tedious extension of winter. Will it snow again this weekend? Probably not. But if it did, you would not hear me complaining.After all, this...

On March 20, spring arrived at long last. But this is still March, so it is only the first part of spring that we see through the window this morning.The...

It has been so long since we had a real winter, I had almost forgotten how much fun it can be.As long as I don’t have to get in the...

It was a perfect day for skiing on the lake. Just a couple inches of snow covered most of the icy surface. No trail needed, we could go anywhere. There...

It was a wet and dreary December ... until early last week. It took just one frigid, calm night. Next morning, I woke to ice at the shoreline. Suddenly, I am...

It is dark this November morning. And cold. I want to stay inside and hibernate.Dawn comes slowly. Eventually, the sun rises, but it gives little heat. I turn another page...

Already the sun is rising late. It’s after 7:30 a.m. where I live, and it is going fast. Thankfully, the dawn arrives well before the sun pokes through the trees...

 Mushrooms, mushrooms everywhere, but none are fit to eat. Or are they? A lot of us have a curious fascination with wild mushrooms. They seem to be fruiting everywhere this...

I climbed to the top of another hill this month. I’ve completed six decades of life. Yet when I look in the mirror, I don’t see an old woman looking...

The sun rises to the northeast long before sleep is ready to give way to the day. I half wake as the first rays of sunshine creep in my window....

Whoever would have thought that the oldest red pine forest in Canada is within the city limits of Greater Sudbury? It’s true. Here is the largest area of old growth...

Spring flowers are in full bloom, much to my surprise. It seemed that the forest floor was brown as ever, until I noticed the violets blooming beneath my feet. Pretty...

After the shortest winter ever, I find myself looking out to a landscape without snow. I’m torn between the sadness of losing the ice from the lake too soon, the...

March 20 — the first day of spring. Or is it? Spring seems to have come weeks ago, and there is no better place than the lake to see how...

 This is the warmest winter ever. I’ve become so used to temperatures hovering around the freezing point that it seems really cold on those few days when the temperature is...

January is a most wonderful month. Because of the light! Gone are the dark days of November and December. It is colder, yes. Minus 31-degrees C at my house Saturday...

The wind died in the middle of the afternoon. Within a few hours, the lake disappeared under a maze of ice crystals. We were on our way home in the...

Why is it so hard to find six-pointed snowflakes these days? Are six-pointed snowflakes difficult to generate on a computer? I am nearly illiterate on computers, but I suspect that...