“The American holly is quite common here,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. “I heard a lark sing, sweet and strong, and heard robins.” Thoreau, a naturalist and philosopher and author of Walden, was describing the rural North End estate of his friend…

Under the Laurentide (granite, water | 2014) Renowned artist and architect Maya Lin is “constantly exploring and revealing aspects of the natural world [such as] places that are hidden beneath the surface of the water…” Lin has always been…

Forget beeswax. The prized ingredient in Samuel Rodman’s candle works was spermaceti, the waxy head matter of toothed whales, especially sperm whales. For the whales, spermaceti most likely aids in communication through echolocation, but in the…

Pardon Gray Preserve has about 160 acres of mixed hardwoods that, when added to the adjacent Weetamoo Woods and Pocasset Ridge, is a highly valuable continuous canopy forest region. Within this forest are significant stands of a rare “coastal…

Vernal pools are temporary wetlands that annually fill with water in the winter and early spring and then become dry when the weather turns warmer, although some pools may not completely evaporate in a wet summer. When pools periodically dry,…

The 65-acre meadow alongside Main Road may be the most valuable wildlife habitat of Pardon Gray Preserve. Grasslands and open fields are disappearing in the Northeast due to the diminishing number of farms and expanding human development. This trend…

Mashapaug Pond is at the center of a complex freshwater ecosystem. Underneath the pond’s calm green surface is a strange world of toxic carp, three-eyed frogs, and rusting refuse. Many people think of cities and the wilderness as completely separate…