Matthew Dickerson: Fishing on thin ice

Even before stepping out onto the ice of Bryant Pond 30 minutes before dawn on New Year’s Day, I could tell it was going to be an unusual opening to Maine’s ice fishing season. 

Matthew Dickerson: What fish taught me in 2022

It’s probably not accurate to say that fish taught me anything. Numerous fishing outings on which I failed to interact with any actual fish is evidence that I don’t even understand their language.

Matthew Dickerson: Brutality, gentleness, nature and Advent

The natural world can be brutal. 

Matthew Dickerson: A reflection on writing and place

When it comes to films and works of fiction, we often think in terms of character development. Did the main characters change? If so, how and why? We don’t always ask that of non-fiction. But we ought to.

Matthew Dickerson: With an uncle on the family farm

I sat on a wide chair atop a tall ladder, leaning against a pine tree with a mature oak growing around the back side of the tree, its brown and brittle leaves mingling with the green needles of the pine.

Matthew Dickerson: Clouds clear off Ascutney

This was our seventh new Vermont state park of 2022 — far and away the most Vermont state parks to which we have made a first-time visit in a single year.

Matthew Dickerson: Salt chucks & silver salmon: Alaska, part 2

So what exactly is a salt chuck? That was one of the questions I had when I arrived at Ernest Gruening State Historic Park.

Matthew Dickerson: Of rain and glaciers: An Alaskan residency, part 1

The history of the place was inspiring, and I soaked in as much as I could. But it was the surrounding scenery and landscape that moved me the most.

Matthew Dickerson: Rainbow trout out of the pockets

I’d only been out on the river once all month. So after dinner, when the river calls my name, I heed the call.

Matthew Dickerson: Three Southern Vt. state parks in one day

My wife and I are trying to visit all of Vermont’s state parks together. Recently we made a southern swing through the state.

Matthew Dickerson: Sockeye tipping: Abundance, resilience and diversity, Part 2

A lone sockeye salmon sits in the stream in front of me under a low canopy of alder. The stream is wide, gravelly and shallow: only two to three inches deep and a few feet wide.

Matthew Dickerson: Sockeye in the Wood River system: Abundance, resilience, diversity; Part 1

For five days and nights I resided in a shoreline cabin partway up the Wood River system in Alaska’s Wood-Tikchik State Park. Officially, I was serving as artist-in-residence for Alaska State Parks and had come to spend a week in the state’s largest park … (read more)

Matthew Dickerson: On Alaska, fishing and wilderness fires

On July 4, as many of us watched fireworks, the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center gave a list of 424 wildfires being tracked in Alaska — all “active, smoldering, or in the process of being demobilized.”

Matthew Dickerson: Three strikes, no photos and the mysterious bowfin

Vermont’s Arrowhead Mountain Lake is the only place I have ever caught a bowfin.

Matthew Dickerson: Getting out again: Groton State Forest

It covers 26,164 acres, and it borders or contains eight lakes or ponds big enough to canoe. According to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, that makes Groton State Forest the second largest contiguous land holding in the state

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