Sarah Courchesne

Sarah Courchesne regards the natural world from the lofty perch of an open-air treehouse and lets the surrounding wildlife come over for a visit.

Tent caterpillars might make you squeamish, but there’s more to these wiggly tree denizens than meets the eye.

Despite its name, the skunk cabbage is a beautiful, mysterious plan, and a herald of spring.

The cold months mete out a sensory deprivation, but the laws of conservation of matter cannot be disobeyed, and insects have to have gone somewhere…

Squirrels live as I live, their fates entwined with the trees’ capricious whim. Come winter, I try to accept their fate: live by the oak, die by the oak.

I had a student a few years ago who joined me on my annual field research trip. Soft-spoken and kind, she also possessed an almost…

Online, we can choose to be foodies, techies, dog people, cat people, paleo or vegan, but the decision is final, and you’d best stick with it for followers.

Broad swathes of my yard are covered in something that might once have been a lawn. The middle has the threadbare look of a heavily trafficked carpet.

The comings and goings of mushrooms are inscrutable. At least to the untrained eye, which mine is. There was the tuft of alcohol inkies that…

I’ve been on more than a few nature walks in my time. Bog walks, woods walks, swamp walks, sometimes leading them myself but mostly trailing along…

Gardening is always a strange temporal exercise. Tasks need to be done that require attention in the present moment, and not on a human schedule….

Sarah Courchesne follows the winter crows from 495 to their roosts in Lawrence.